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Lean into the Valentine’s Day fun this month with a Valentine’s Day math read aloud along with some other easy-to-implement Valentine’s Day math activities!
Valentine’s Day Math Read Aloud
This sweet book Valentine’s Day, Here I Come is a collection of short poems perfect for a pre-k through 1st grade classroom. As you read the poems aloud, choose a math activity or two that complements the poems in the book!
Poem: We Love ❤️s
Activity: Draw a collection of hearts on a piece of chart paper. Your students’ task? Tell you how many hearts they see! You can customize this activity by choosing a number of hearts that would be relevant to your students and by choosing an arrangement of hearts that is relevant to their skill set. For example, in a 1st grade classroom, you might draw 30 hearts in groups of 5. All of your students would have an entry point to the activity by counting by 1s to 30 but some students will be able to extend by noticing that you can count by 5s. Other students might find different ways to count the hearts!
Poem: My Lacy Heart
Activity: Provide each student with a heart cut-out. Ask them to fold the heart in half and talk about the word “symmetry”. Allow your students to cut a design into the heart much like you would cut a paper snowflake. As your students open up their heart they will be able to see their symmetrical design. As a bonus, allow the students to use markers and stickers to continue to decorate their heart but ask that they keep these designs symmetrical as well!
Poem: Happy *Sniffle* Valentine’s Day
Activity: In this silly poem about being allergic to roses on Valentine’s day you will see an illustration with roses of all colors for sale at the store. Provide your students each with 10 red and yellow disks to represent the red and yellow roses in the illustration. Ask your students to see how many different “bouquets” they can create with red and yellow roses. This is a partners of 10 activity! Your students can record the different bouquets as illustrations, number bonds, in a table or as equations. Notice which students work methodically as they find different combinations of 10, notice the different ways your students record their equations, and ask your students questions such as “Have you found all of the different bouquets that are possible? How do you know?”
Valentine’s Day Math Craft
Try a fun math craftfivity this month as a form of assessment! Instead of giving your students a simple paper/pencil assessment, level up the fun by asking your students to complete the assessment as a planning page for a fun craft!
In this Place Value Love Bug students choose a 2 or 3-digit number and then show that number in a variety of ways on their planning form. One leg might show the number as a place value drawing while the other shows the number in word form. One antenae shows ten more than the target number while the other antenae shows ten less.
Keeping the assessment fun and light allows your students to show what they know while also getting in some fine motor scissors practice and creating a beautiful bulletin board!
Graphing Conversation Hearts
Grab a handful of conversation hearts and you are all set for any number of math activities.
- Graph the number of hearts of each color. Take the activity a step further by asking students to grab an index card and write a question that can be solved based on their graph. Ex: How many more red hearts than orange hearts are in my collection? Students can complete a gallery walk to answer one another’s questions.
- Practice fractions of a group with conversation hearts. Provide each student with a pile of hearts and ask if they can demonstrate fractions of a group using their candies. Ex: Grab a group of candies where 1/3 of the candies are yellow. Your students can turn and talk with a partner- did they create the same model or different models? Can both models be correct? How do they know?
Valentine’s Day Fractions Activity
Making and designing your own chocolate box is another fun Valentine’s Day activity for students who are beginning to delve into fractions! Students will design their own chocolate box and then describe their box using fractions. This activity also makes a beautiful bulletin board when they are complete!
A print-and-go version of this activity can be found by clicking the image to the left.
