February Math Love

Valentine’s Day is this Thursday, which is just around the corner! Children love this holiday and schools often have parties celebrating this day. Valentine’s Day fun can also be brought home in the form of math games for some added fun. If you’re looking to take the magic of Valentine’s Day into your household this week, here are some fun activities you can try with your family:

1. For early elementary schoolers. Candy hearts are a Valentine’s Day tradition but they can also be used for education. Grab a box or two of them and have your child to separate them by color. Then have your child add and subtract candy hearts together, using the separated colors. For instance, take 7 yellow hearts  and put them in a pile. Then add 9 pink hearts to that pile and have your children count out the total  number of hearts – 16. Adding one group of colors to another will help them understand where the two groups of hearts came from and then how to subtract them.

2. For later elementary schoolers. Assist your child in creating a Valentine’s Day graph with poll questions that have yes, no or neutral answers that they can ask your family. Then have family members guess what results will be. Some questions could be, 

• Do you like Valentine’s Day? 
• Do you like chocolate on Valentine’s Day?
• Is Valentine’s Day your favorite holiday?
• Did you attend a Valentine’s Day party this week?
• Did you make or buy a gift for another person this Valentine’s Day?

After polling, have your child total the results and plot them on a chart to see the results. The family member of the closest result guesses could win a special treat or night off from chores.

3. For middle schoolers. Write or type some word problems that are Valentine’s Day related on a paper, then cut them out in a hear shape with enough space below the problem for your child to solve the problem. Some ideas for problems are:

• Caleb and Finn played Valentine Victory at the arcade. Caleb scored thirty-nine thousand, eight hundred ten points. Finn scored twenty-three thousand, two hundred points. How many points did they score in all?
• Grace cut a rectangle seven inches by two inches out of red paper. She drew a vase of white roses on it. She wrote "Happy Valentine's Day" at the top. What is the area of the red paper rectangle?
• Mrs. Taylor made cookies for Hailey's class party. She used one and a half cups of chocolate chips and half cups of peanut chips. How many cups of peanut chips and chocolate chips did she use?
• Have them hole punch the tops of the hearts and then put string through them to make heart pennant from them.

4. For high schoolers. Write or type algebraic equations on paper. Some examples of equations are:

• Simplify: 2x2 + 3x + 4x2 – 5x (Answer: 6x2–2x)
• 7-8= (Answer: 1)
• Multiply: (x + 5)(x – 3)  (Answer: x2 + 2x – 15)

Then write or type the answer to the equations to the right of the equation, leaving about 3 inches of space between the equations and the answers. Then cut the equations and answers out into heart shapes. For each equation and answer, cut a zig zag shape between the equation on one side of the heart and the answer on the other side of the heart, so that it looks like a broken heart with the equation on one piece and the answer on the other. Have your high schooler then solve the equations. Checking their answers will come in the form of matching the correct answer up with the correct equation to bring the hearts together again. 

We know that when parents work with kids to incorporate math in a regular routine at home, just like reading, kids are more likely to enter their classrooms with confidence in math. We hope these activities will help your student understand that math can be fun. Maybe one day, they’ll come to love math as much as we do!