We’ve got your back with 5 super simple Valentine’s Day math activities that scream February vibes and cater perfectly to your students’ excitement in the lead up to Feb 14th.
We are all for integrating fun events with learning here at Rainbow Sky HQ – anything to keep the kids engaged and thinking, right?
So, let’s talk about fun ways we can incorporate Valentine’s Day into our Math lessons. Because let’s be real, what’s better than infusing some love-filled fun into our daily math activities?
Here are 5 easy-to-incorporate Valentine’s Day math activities that are perfect for February:
1. Valentine’s Number of the Day
If you are a regular around here, you will know that we love a ‘number of the day’ activity (read more about why here).
In a nutshell, Number of the Day is a ready-to-go Math lesson based on a range of number sense skills. We created some Valentine’s Day themed templates that are short, sweet and great for number work during February.
(Psst: Number of the Day is also an ideal assessment that is open-ended so students can be working on different sized numbers!)
View our Number of the Day resource here.
2. Valentine’s Fraction or Decimal of the Day
We know that lots of older grades are working beyond number sense skills, so a Fraction of the Day or Decimal of the Day would cater for them perfectly. Again, these are awesome to use as centre activities or even whole class lessons. They even look awesome displayed on your classroom walls.
Our Fraction and Decimal of the Day templates come in a resource pack with Number of the Day, so you could have students working on different templates depending on their ability – hello easy differentiation!
View the Fraction and Decimal of the Day resource here.
3. Times table / Fact Fluency chatterboxes
Valentine’s Day Math chatterboxes are the perfect way to build on multiplication fluency during the month of February (plus your students are going to LOVE them).
You can easily cater for learning needs by giving students different times tables to work on.
These chatterboxes / fortune tellers / cootie catchers are ideal for:
- A fun multiplication lesson
- As a lesson warm-up
- Valentine’s themed math rotation task
- Fast finisher task
- Homework activity or
- Revision lesson.
If you teach younger students, we have chatterboxes to work on Number Bond fluency and Odd and Even numbers too.
Check out our Multiplication chatterboxes here
Check out our Number Bond chatterboxes here
4. Number sorts
Number sorts require quick thinking and help develop student automaticity when manipulating numbers. You can create a simple number sort using many different skills quite quickly (put a Valentine’s spin on it by writing your numbers on hearts, love bugs or roses).
Some examples of number sorts include:
- Odd and even numbers
- Prime and composite numbers
- Rounding up or rounding down
- Greater than or less than
We have a range of number sort boards that you can download for FREE here.
5. Card Games
We love using playing cards in our learning. Why not pull out all the heart cards for your Valentine’s Day Math Centres.
Here are some great Maths activities you could do using your heart playing cards:
- Number-word match – Have the numbers 1-9 written in words on cards. Choose a card and then find the word to match. You can extend this activity by making 2-digit numbers (place two cards side-by-side) and get children to record the number in words themselves.
- Playing card and domino match – This task develops a skill we call subitising. Match the number on the card to the number of dots on a domino.
- Number of the Day – Use cards to generate your number of the day.
- Matching Friends to ten – students could simply find pairs or create number sentences using the cards.
- Times table practise – Choose two random cards and multiply them together.
- Two (or more) Digit Addition & Subtraction – Depending on how children are developing with their addition and subtraction skills, use the cards to create algorithms for them to solve.
- Greater than or Less than – Sticky notes work great for adding greater than, less than or equal to signs in between each card. Work with single digits or place two or more cards side by side to make number sentences a little more complicated.
- Rounding numbers – Students sort numbers depending on if they round up or round down.
We hope this post gave you some sweet inspiration in the lead up to preparing you Valentine’s Day Math activities. If you are looking for more ideas (that aren’t just about Maths), check out this blog post.
Do you wish you knew how to keep your students engaged in Maths all year round? Discover 6 ways to create Maths lessons students love! Grab the free download here.
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