Valentine’s Day breaks up the winter doldrums and gives students a chance to create heart-shaped crafts and share candy or gifts with classmates.
This year, give students some insight into the history behind the holiday. How did Valentine’s Day begin? Why do we celebrate it today? What IS love? And, most importantly: Which candy is your favorite?
Here are five videos that discuss Valentine’s Day, love, and the all-important heart:
1. How Did Valentine’s Day Start? Every year, millions of kids give cards and candy to their classmates. But why? Who invented Valentine’s Day, and when did it start?
2. The myth of Cupid and Psyche: Psyche was born so beautiful that she was worshipped as a new incarnation of Venus, the goddess of love. But human lovers were too intimidated to approach her, and Apollo recommended her father abandon her on a crag where she would marry “a cruel and savage, serpent-like winged evil.” But Psyche’s story ended up being much more interesting. Brendan Pelsue shares the myth of Cupid and Psyche.
3. Would you Rather? Valentine’s Day Edition: Get excited about Valentine’s Day with Would You Rather Sweet Heart fun! Great activity for the whole family. Great brain break activity for students at school or remote learning! Get to know your students personally through their answer choices.
4. How the heart actually pumps blood: For most of history, scientists weren’t quite sure why our hearts were beating or even what purpose they served. Eventually, we realized that these thumping organs serve the vital task of pumping clean blood throughout the body. But how? Edmond Hui investigates how it all works by taking a closer look at the heart’s highly efficient ventricle system.
5. What is love? Is love a signal winding through your neural pathways? A cliché? A cult? Love is easy to compare but difficult to define, maybe because we’re fundamentally biased; we try to define love while falling in or out of it. And love feels differently to every person who feels it, but this subjective emotion has evolutionary explanations, too. Brad Troeger takes a shot at the definition of love.
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