4 Hands-On Valentine's Math Activities

4 Hands-On Valentine's Math Activities

Even though Valentine's Day was inside this year (like most things), you don't have to stop celebrating the day of love just yet.  Try these 4 Valentine’s Day-themed math activities to keep your child in the Valentine's Day spirit.

Candy Hearts Tower

There’s no Valentine’s Day without candy hearts, which leads us into our 1st activity, building a candy heart tower. This exercise practices measuring concepts and using critical thinking skills. To get started, all you need is a bag of Valentine candy conversation hearts, a ruler and pencil and paper. The goal of this exercise is to build your candy tower as high as you can without it falling.

Encourage your child to take a few moments and think about their strategy before starting.  Ask them questions to get them thinking, such as, "how will you create the base?" or "which direction will you build the tower, vertical-only or with horizontal and vertical structures?” Encourage them to be creative, using patterns and different candy colors. 

With each new tower, measure the height and width with a ruler and write down the measurements. Try the best of 3 (or as many as they want to try). Once finished, have your child compare the tower sizes and discuss which one they completed was the highest and why. Then discuss why they didn’t have the same success with the others.

Homework Hearts

To break up the monotony of regular pen and paper work, this activity gives new meaning to the request for your child to "show their work". Grab a few pieces of colorful construction or printer paper. Draw a heart shape on the paper and cut it out with a pair of scissors. Then fold the heart in half to make two sides.

On one side of the hearts, your child can write out the math homework problem. On the second side, they will write out how they solve the problem, mistakes and all, until they calculate the correct answer. Each new math problem is worked out on a new paper heart. Once completed, you can punch a whole on each side of each paper heart and connect them with a string or a shoelace and hang them up to see all your child's hard work and use it as a homework review tool.

Edible Valentine's Slime

For a fun measuring activity that your child can do, try making edible Valentine's Day slime. All you need is some household pantry staples to make this easy slime recipe.

You will need:

●      1 tablespoon of cornstarch

●      1 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk

●      2 tablespoons extra-fine granulated sugar

●      Red food coloring

●      Conversation heart candies or any Valentine's candy

1. Measure out the cornstarch, sugar and condensed milk. Then pour each ingredient into your pot.
2. Stir the mixture on the stovetop under medium-high heat. The mixture should thicken as you stir. Be careful that it doesn't burn.
3. Lastly, stir in a few drops of red food coloring. Use as much or as little as you like to get the red color of your choice.

Allow the mixture to cool completely before using. Once cooled, you can add in your candy hearts or other Valentine's candy and stir them in. The slime should last for up to 5 days in a resealable plastic bag.

Valentine Origami Hearts

This fun origami activity will help your child with shapes and geometry. To make the origami heart, you can use any size sheet of square paper.

1. Fold the square along both diagonals - right top corner to left bottom corner, then top point to the bottom point of the square. Each side should look like a triangle when folded.
2. Rotate the paper slightly and fold down the top corner onto the middle line.
3. Bring up the bottom point and fold to top of the square.
4. Fold each side of the bottom corners up to the middle line. It should start to resemble the shape of a heart.
5. Flip your paper heart over and fold down the two top corners sticking up to the top line.
6. Fold over the two side points sticking out slightly, so they form a small triangle shape on each side.
7. All done! Turn your heart over and admire your geometric Valentine's creation.

Although they have a Valentine's theme, these hands-on activities are great for any time of year. For more ways to keep math engaging for your child, reach out to us here at Mathnasium. We specialize in offering specialized math instruction for children in grades 2 - 12, in person and online. Give us a call or send us an email directly to schedule your child's free assessment and learn more about our method and the exciting things we have to offer.