Math can be fun even on Valentine’s Day when you bring Valentines STEM activities into the mix. It’s super fun to use conversation hearts as manipulatives for Valentine’s Day. We call this Valentine’s Day math! We always buy conversation hearts around Valentine’s Day, but to be honest, we don’t really like to eat them as candy. We’re not huge fans of the chalky, powdery texture and bland flavor. But you can’t have Valentine’s Day without conversation hearts! So, what can you do with them? Use them as math manipulatives, of course!
We used our conversation hearts to make our Valentine’s Day math more fun. We played with division, multiplication, subtraction, and addition! Everyone was able to get in on the mathy fun.
Use our ideas as a springboard to make your own Valentine’s Day math with conversation hearts.
You can use the hears for grouping, finding common factors, graphing, building shapes, counting, and a whole lot more!
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Valentine’s Day Math with Conversation Hearts
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Math is a lot more fun when you can eat your manipulatives!
What you’ll need for Valentine’s Day Math:
- Conversation hearts
- Food-safe marker
- Paper
- Pencil or marker
Teaching Resources for Valentine’s Day
Here are some fun STEM teaching resources for Valentine’s Day that you can use in the classroom.
Browse the entire category of Valentine’s Day classroom supplies here or grab some of my Valentine’s Day favorites from the list below.
Exploding Candy Lab Science Kit
Chemistreats Classroom Candy Science Kits
Lollipop Lab Candy Science Kit
Valentine Building Block Bears
LEGO Friends Flower and Chocolate Kit
LEGO Pop up Valentine Card with Swans
More Valentine’s Day STEM Activities
- Make a homemade bouncy ball for Valentine’s Day
- Learn how to make glitter slime for Valentine’s Day
- Valentine’s Day Lava Lamp
- Valentine 3D Structure Challenge
How to Set Up the Conversation Heart Math Activity
Before starting your math problems, write the numbers from 0-9 on the back of conversation hearts using a food-safe marker (if you want the kids to be able to eat them).
You’ll need a lot of numbers, particularly if you are working on multiple digit addition, multiplication, or grouping.
We found one large bag of hearts was big enough for almost every math problem we wanted to do.
If you get into the multiple hundreds, however, you won’t be able to do grouping problems with just one bag of hearts.
Give each kid an assortment of conversation heart numbers and some scratch paper and a pencil.
Valentine Science Books and More!
These fun Valentine’s Day Books for kids will teach kids about the science around Valentine’s Day, the history of the holiday, and a whole lot more!
The Calendar Kids Meet February Book
In My Heart a Book of Feelings
I Love You Around the World Valentine Coloring Book
Candy Bites the Science of Sweets
Celebrate Valentine’s Day Holidays Around the World
Build Valentine’s Day Fun with LEGO
Valentine’s Day Addition
Monkey was practicing multiple digit addition, so we created some quick problems just to get her brain working before we moved onto harder stuff.
Valentine’s Day Subtraction
Our subtraction problems were pretty straight forward. If you need to borrow a number in your math, we just put a little heart off to the side above the other conversation hearts to indicate we were borrowing.
Valentine’s Day Multiplication
Monkey is working on multiplying multiple digits, so I made this quick problem up for her. She loved using the hearts rather than just writing down the numbers.
Valentine’s Day Division
Monkey solved this division problem using grouping, but you can also solve division problems the regular way using conversation hearts as well. There are so many ways to use conversation hearts to learn!
Valentine Classroom Decorations
Add some Valentine’s Day festivities and flair to your classroom with these classroom decorations for Valentine’s Day!
Valentine’s Day Door Decorating Kit
Tissue Paper Classroom Valentine’s Door Decorations
Valentine’s Day Classroom Window Clings
Valentine Letters Classroom Door Decorations
Valentine’s Day Classroom Decorating Kit
Our Class is Sweet Cupcake Valentine’s Day Classroom Decorating Kit
Our Love for Learning Grows and Grows Classroom Decorations
A Class Full of Sweethearts Classroom Decorations for Valentine’s Day
