This super-simple Valentine’s Day Venn diagram math activity teaches children in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades how to find the common factors between numbers. It’s one of our most memorable Valentines STEM activities, and also one of the easiest.
I like to use hands-on manipulatives for math activities when I can, even with older grades. My kids learn well with hands-on methods, which is why I always try to incorporate a hands-on element to my lessons when possible.
This Valentine’s Day, why not make math class a lot more fun with conversation hearts, a food safe marker, and a fun Valentine common factors activity?
This Valentine’s Day Venn diagram math factors activity helps kids from 4th-6th grade learn how math factors work in a concrete, hands-on way.
Valentine’s Day Venn Diagram Math Factors
If your kids are learning about factors, and you want to bring the spirit of Valentine’s Day into the classroom, try this Valentine’s Day Venn Diagram activity that uses conversation hearts as manipulatives.
Kids in 4th grade to 6th grade will love this creative twist on learning math factors.
What is a Venn Diagram for Kids
A venn diagram is a diagram of two circles that overlap in the middle. One side of the circle has one fact or number, while the other side has another fact or number.
The facts that can be true of both circles go in the middle. For example, you could say, things that have wheels on one side of the circle.
The other circle might say, things that fly.
And then in the center, you would write “airplane,” because it both has wheels and can fly.
But for the Valentine’s Day Venn diagram, you’ll be using your Venn diagram to find common factors between two numbers.
What You Need for the Valentine’s Day Venn Diagram Project
Add this Valentine’s Day math activity to your list of fun math activities for kids!
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Valentine’s Day Venn Diagram Lesson Plan
Monkey is currently in fifth grade and learning all about multiplying large numbers, fractions, and finding common factors between numbers.
To give her more practice, I set up this fun Venn diagram factors assignment using conversation hearts.
Using the hearts made the activity a lot more fun for her, and it was nice to be able to use some of the hundreds of conversation hearts that I usually just end up throwing out.
How to Do the Venn Diagram Math Factors Activity
Setting up the common factors activity is easy.
You just need to draw two overlapping circles on a piece of paper.
I colored the centers of the circles where they overlapped to help Monkey see where the factors aligned.
You’ll also want to have a pile of conversation hearts on hand and a food-safe marker for the kids to use to write on their conversation hearts.
Step-By-Step Directions for the Valentine’s Day Venn Diagram Math Factors Activity
Now you are ready to start the activity.
First, we picked two multi-digit numbers.
I made sure ahead of time that all the numbers we used had common factors with each other.
You can use a common factors calculator to find this information out easily.
As Monkey remembered and calculated the factors of each number, she wrote that number down with a Food-safe marker onto the back of a conversation heart.
She repeated the process with the second number.
Then, she looked to see if any of the numbers on the hearts matched.
When they did, she moved them to the center.
We repeated this process for about six different factor sets.
By the end of the Valentine math factor activity, she was much better at identifying which numbers were likely to have common factors than when we started.