Sweet Math Activities for Valentine's Day

Let’s get sweet on some seasonal favorites to make math a little more fun this month.
I am not talking about conversation heart sorting and graphing,
but I am talking about some new and FUN ideas to make math a completely SwEeT experience.
Let’s dive into some sweet math activities for Valentine’s Day.

I grabbed these little heart containers at the dollar store.
{You can also try Party City or Oriental Trading.}

I numbered the boxes with a sharpie and wrote math equations on them.
Four equations on the red hearts.
Four equations on the pink hearts.

Inside the box is the answer.

You could easily change this to include counters on the inside.

I place the hearts inside a basket.
Then I give them a simple sheet like this.

The goal isn’t to add, although that is a bonus.
I really am looking for students to write math sentences.

My students take hear #1 and find where to write the equation on the line.
Then they add to find the answer to write for the solution.
Opening the heart self check their work.

Because the pack of hearts I found contained two different colors,
I took this opportunity to differentiate my activity.
The pink hearts held number sentences ON grade level.
But these red hearts were above grade level.
If my students were able to complete the pink hearts,
they moved on to the red ones.

Additionally, I ask my students to create their own math sentence at the bottom.
Because this is my actual GOAL of the activity,I want to ask them an open ended question to check their number sense understanding.

Looking for more ideas for sweet math activities?
I created this math sort.

I love to use these with a small group.
There are number answers from 1-10,
differentiation is easy to do with activity as well.

We also sort solid and flat shapes into these jars.
{What a great way to assess knowledge of a geometry standard!}

We also cover time to the hour and half hour.

{I know time isn’t covered with Common Core
but most kindergarten teachers I know still cover it.
Our first grade teachers asked that we still teach it… and we agreed.}