Teaching Strategies

5-Minute Film Festival: 7 Videos on Love for Valentine’s Day

It’s Valentine’s Day! And Edutopia’s VideoAmy has collected these 7 delightfully entertaining videos about love to help you celebrate.

By Amy Erin Borovoy

February 14, 2014 Updated February 13, 2015

Whether you're a softie who jumps at any opportunity to tell everyone around you how much you love them, or a curmudgeon who thinks February 14th is a holiday manufactured by Hallmark and the candy industry to make everyone spend money, Valentine's Day gets a rise out of almost everyone. I confess to being the former, so I couldn't help gathering a collection of videos to celebrate the art, the science, and the mystery of love. As always, please preview anything you want to share with students -- there are some mentions in this playlist of topics not appropriate for the littlest ones. Enjoy!

Video Playlist: The Sweetest Valentine's Day

Watch the first video below, or watch the whole playlist on YouTube.

What is Love? - Brad Troeger (05:00)
I really enjoyed the vintage animation style of this great TED-Ed video. Wisconsin health teacher Brad Troeger built a full lesson for this video over at TED-Ed's website if you want to dig deeper.
Kids React to Valentine's Day (03:36)
Let these adorable little ones get you in the mood for laughing and learning about love, as they ponder some terribly important questions (to a Django Reinhardt tune, no less!). Small Fry blog interviewed 25 kids for this video.
Danny and Annie (05:51)
StoryCorps is a wonderful organization that collects audio of people telling personal stories. Get the tissues -- this one, about a working-class Brooklyn couple and their 27-year romance, will have you weeping, I promise.
Your Brain in Love and Lust (04:41)
Okay, enough heart-string tugging -- Scientific American is ready to get physical with this video that traces the flow of chemicals through your brain in the different stages of romance.
Valentine's Day for Math Nerds (03:41)
This is for those that would rather map out their feelings in a spreadsheet -- a series of charts and graphs that poke fun at all the energy we put into Valentine's Day (or, as the narrator calls it, Singles Awareness Day).
What Does Love Look Like to YOU? (02:26)
The ever-wonderful SoulPancake team asked their viewers to send footage of what love looked like, and the result is this sweet montage of user-generated clips, originally aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
The Proof That We Are Soulmates (01:49)
And here's the geekiest love story of all -- this made headlines in 2012 when a Stanford journalism professor proposed by publishing an online infographic "proving" that he and his sweetheart were soul-mates. An Italian motion designer was inspired by the story to make this short video.

More Resources for Teaching About Valentine's Day

I realize it's a little late for lesson plans around Valentine's Day, but maybe these will provide a little help for next year. Or, ditch the V-Day specifics and just get the kids talking about love, any time of the year! Feel free to share your favorite love-related activities and ideas in the comments below, and I hope you have a sweet Valentine's Day.