TOP valentine’s day ideas & activities for teens and tweens
Valentine’s Day is a beautiful festival for everyone to take part in. It’s the celebration of love! Romantic love, family love, friendship love and love of all the things in our lives we take for granted.
Teens fall somewhere in-between age-wise. Perhaps too old for kid’s Valentine’s craft activities, elementary school Valentine’s discos and love letters to parents and friends, but maybe a bit young for romance (or maybe not!).
So in this post, we suggest Valentine’s date ideas for celebrating the day of love with all teens, from your middle school to high school students. This includes creative, sporty, outdoorsy, food-related and movie-themed activities.
We have small group craft ideas and artistic Valentine’s day activities with simple supplies as fun activities for a girls night or mixed-gender Valentine’s day activities.
We also share great ideas for a Valentine’s day games nights. Board games are a lovely evening activity for a teen group, especially when accompanied with love themes snacks and treats.
For your active and outdoorsy kids, we have great suggestions for outdoor, Valentine’s themed activities which is a fun idea for the whole family to join together doing!
Another cute activity idea is Valentine’s themed baking! What better way to celebrate those you love than with sweet treats, and this can be a more entertaining activity for older kids than card making or sticker booking.
Last but not least we have some classic Valentine’s teen romance movies for kids to watch together in a Valentine’s theme slumber party and movie marathon!
Since it’s the season of love, we have another post with great Valentine’s day game ideas for adults that you might also like to check out! Or, if you have kid’s of different ages, we also have Valentine’s party ideas for Toddlers and Valentine’s Ideas for Kids!
Valentine’s day crafts and arty activities
Crafting and art projects are such a lovely way to get creative energy flowing and tap into the feminine soul for any gender! With just simple materials there are a load of lovely projects and activities to get involved in as a lovely part of your Valentine’s day celebrations! Here are some of our suggestions:
- DIY Friendship Bracelets: Make friendship bracelets in Valentine’s Day colors (red, pink, and white) to gift to friends.
- Customized Phone Cases: Decorate plain phone cases with heart stickers, paint, or markers to give them a love-themed touch.
- Valentine’s Day T-Shirts: Design and paint or iron-on heart-themed designs onto plain t-shirts.
- Valentine’s Day Scrunchies: Create heart-shaped or love-themed scrunchies using fabric and elastic bands. For this you can use heart-printed fabric, or draw on fabric first with special markers.
- Customized Sneakers or Shoes: Use fabric markers or paint to decorate canvas sneakers with cute designs or messages.
- Valentine’s Day Slime: Make colorful, sparkly slime with a Valentine’s Day twist by adding heart-shaped glitter or confetti.
- Love Potion Bath Bombs: Make heart-shaped bath bombs with a rose or lavender scent and package them in cute, tissue paper parcels.
- Valentine’s Day Mason Jar Candle Holders: Decorate mason jars with paint, glitter, and heart cutouts to create charming candle holders.
- Heart-Shaped Soap Bars: Make heart-shaped soap bars with romantic colors and fragrances. You can also embed small, heart-shaped soap pieces within them.
- Bath Tea Bags: Craft bath tea bags filled with a mixture of herbs and Epsom salts. Tie them with paper hearts as tags and a little love poem.
- Valentine’s day DIY lip balm making: Use a natural recipe to fill little lip balm tubes with an eco-friendly salve for gorgeous, kissable lips!
If you’re looking for inspiration for Valentine’s themed quotes and messages to decorate or gift tag your creations with, check out the Lil Tigers Valentines day page for inspiration!
Valentine’s day themed games
Here are some suggestions for games you could set up for your teens on Valentine’s day! Some of these are board games, and some are more like DIY games you can create for them!
- Love Letter: Love Letter is a quick and easy card game where players try to deliver a love letter to the princess. It’s a perfect choice for a Valentine’s Day game night.
- Couple Player Board Games: Gather a collection of board games suitable for teens with that all have a ‘romance’ twist to them, such as “Codenames: Duet,” or “Hive.”
- Fog of Love: (older teens) This unique two-player game simulates a romantic relationship. Players create and role-play their characters while making choices that affect the outcome of their love story.
- Valentine’s pictionary! Any Valentine’s theme word goes. Two groups of teams have to guess as many Valentine theme words, drawn by their opponents, as quickly as possible!
- Valentine’s rapidough: The game where you have to make items, locations or feeling out of playdough for others to guess in a similar style to dictionary. The Valentine twist is that the items have to be iconically related to a classic romantic love story.
- Romantic comedy or chick flick trivia: This is like a quiz, in teams groups have to answer questions relating to iconic romantic comedy movies or the most famous love stories! Even better if you have a big group of kids, they can even write quiz rounds for eachother.
- Cupid Arrow toss (This could be like target practice, throwing rubber balls or soft darts at a paper heart cut out, arranged like a bulls eye on the wall!) This is a fun, more active Valentine’s day theme, but you can spice it up with rewards or forfeits for hitting or missing the targets!
- Card game truth or dare! Find a teen-friendly truth or dare card game. This is a great idea for a bit of a cheeky mysterious Valetine’s theme game evening! It’s certainly sure to bring about a lot of laughs!
Valentine’s themed baking ideas
Baking can be a super fun Valentine’s activity for teens, and if they make enough for the rest of the family to enjoy, that’s a big win! Most sweet treats can be made in shade of pinks and red, or with chocolate or strawberry flavours, but here are some specially selected ideas of Valentine’s baking ideas.
- Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies: Bake classic sugar cookies and use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to create cookies that you can decorate with pink and red icing, sprinkles, and edible glitter.
- Red Velvet Cupcakes: Bake red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Top them with heart-shaped sprinkles or fondant hearts.
- Chocolate-Covered Strawberries: Dip fresh strawberries in melted chocolate and decorate them with drizzles of white chocolate or edible gold dust for an elegant touch.
- Valentine’s Day Cake Pops: Make cake pops using a heart-shaped mold, and then dip them in colored candy melts or chocolate. Decorate with tiny heart-shaped sprinkles or edible roses.
- Mini Heart-Shaped Pies: Create mini heart-shaped pies filled with your choice of fruit fillings. Top with whipped cream or a lattice crust.
- Valentine’s Day Brownies: Bake brownies in a heart-shaped pan and cut them into individual hearts. You can also add pink and red M&M’s for a festive touch.
- Valentine’s Day Macarons: Make heart-shaped macarons filled with raspberry, chocolate, or strawberry ganache.
- Ombre Layer Cake: Create an ombre layer cake by using varying shades of pink or red for the cake layers. Finish with buttercream frosting and heart decorations.
- Love-themed Cupcake Toppers: Bake regular cupcakes and make or buy love-themed toppers, such as edible roses, heart-shaped edible paper, or small love messages.
- Strawberry Shortcake: Bake a classic strawberry shortcake, layering fresh strawberries and whipped cream between fluffy biscuits or cake layers. This one’s a showstopper!
- Valentine’s Day Whoopie Pies: Make heart-shaped whoopie pies with a sweet filling, such as cream cheese or marshmallow fluff.
- Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cakes: Bake individual heart-shaped chocolate cakes and serve them with a dusting of powdered sugar and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
- Valentine’s Day Cookie Bars: Make cookie bars filled with white chocolate chips, pink and red M&M’s, and Valentine’s-themed sprinkles.
- Love Potion Hot Chocolate: Create a special hot chocolate by adding whipped cream, heart-shaped marshmallows, and a drizzle of chocolate syrup.
Valentine’s day movie night ideas
A movie night is always great fun, and Valentine’s is a perfect theme to make a movie night extra special. As well as a romantic comedy selection, we suggest face masks, pink nail polish, heart shaped cookies and strawberries covered in chocolate!
Here are some ideas for cute teenage romance films:
- To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018) – A charming teen romance about a girl whose secret love letters are accidentally sent to her crushes.
- Twilight (2008) – The first installment in the popular vampire-themed romance series about a mortal girl and a vampire.
- 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) – A modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” set in a high school.
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) – An emotional tale of a freshman’s journey through high school, where he finds friendship and love.
- Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) – A romantic comedy that explores love, infidelity, and self-discovery.
- The Kissing Booth (2018) – A teen rom-com about a girl who starts a kissing booth at a carnival and finds herself in a complicated love triangle.
- Mean Girls (2004) – While not a traditional romance, it has elements of teen romance and is a comedy classic about high school life.
- Love, Simon (2018) – A groundbreaking film about a high school student coming to terms with his sexual orientation and an online love interest.
- Hello, Goodbye and everything in Between (2022) – A high school couple plan to retrace the steps of the relationship in an epic final date before college
- The Kissing Booth– (2018) Set in a high school, one teen is forced to confirm their crush at a kissing booth!
Outdoors or sporty Valentine’s day activities
If Valentine’s falls on a weekend, or if you’re just planning a weekend of Valentine’s related activities then maybe one of these activities would be a perfect activity- maybe even for the entire family! These are all easy ways of incorporating the Valentine’s theme into a fun outdoor activity
Valentine’s Day Picnic: Plan a super-cute romantic picnic with heart-shaped sandwiches, red and pink fruits, and a special Valentine’s dessert. Take a red or pink picnic blanket and to make the date extra cute, scatter some rose petals across it!
Heart-Shaped Geocaching: Create a geocaching adventure-mission with heart-shaped containers or clues leading to romantic spots where you can exchange Valentine’s Day notes or small gifts.
Love Letter Scavenger Hunt: Have teens write cute love messages to each other and set clues for where to find them! You could also set this up in a local park, encouraging them to write sweet messages for strangers to find, as a random act of kindness!
Outdoor Movie Night: Set up an outdoor movie screening in your backyard or a local park. Choose a romantic movie and bring blankets, pillows, and snacks for a cozy movie night under the stars.
Heart Rock Painting: Collect small, smooth rocks and paint them with little hearts, or other Valentine’s Day designs. Leave them in a park or along a hiking trail for others to find or exchange them with each other.
Valentine’s Day Photography: Go for a photography adventure in an outdoor setting and capture the beauty of nature along with your love. Create a photo album of the day’s best shots.
Heart-Shaped Kite Flying: Make or order some heart-shaped Valentine’s kites (or any kite really!) and go fly it! This is a great way to spend the day outdoors doing something quite romantic and whimsical that is also perfect for active, sporty kids!
Fire Pit Evening: If you have access to a fire pit, spend the evening by the fire, toasting marshmallows, and spending special time together under the stars.
Outdoor Dance Party: Set up a small outdoor dance floor and dance to your favorite pop love songs under the open sky. Decorate the space with fairy lights or a disco mirror ball for a super cute ambiance!
Stargazing and Constellation Exploration: Spend the evening stargazing and try to identify different constellations. Share stories and myths related to the stars and constellations.
Outdoor Art and Craft: Bring art supplies and create outdoor art like chalk drawings on a sidewalk or painting on canvas in a park. Get creative with Valentine’s Day themes, love hearts and love poems.
Valentines day gifts
If you’re looking for cute ideas for gifts for your teens on valentines day, or to help them buy for a best friend or romantic interest in their lives, we have two great gift idea guides:
Happy Valentine’s Teens!
To all teens and teen parents: Happy Valentine’s day! We wish you a love-filled season with some special Valentine’s day activities and a super great time celebrating with friends or family!
Happy Valentine’s day celebrations!
Zoe x
