Valentine’s Day Themed Math Activities

Valentine’s Day is a great time to incorporate holiday themes in the classroom. We could all use some colors by this time in winter, and the idea of showing love and friendship to everyone in the classroom is one we can all get behind.

Here are some easy Valentine’s Day math activities you can do in the classroom or at home.

If you have conversation hearts on hand, you can do this Valentine’s Day math activity in several parts from 123 Homeschool 4 Me. It starts as a dice rolling game, then you chart the hearts of each color and do some math with those numbers. The free printables are available on the website.

Here’s another chart you can use to sort and graph conversation hearts by color. It’s from A Little Pinch of Perfect.

Use conversation hearts or another small manipulative like heart shaped buttons or pompoms to measure the height of the flowers on this printable from Buggy and Buddy.

And speaking of pompoms, use them to roll and fill a heart-shaped cookie cutter using the activity from Modern Preschool. Little kids can count how many pom poms they use, while older kids can count how many of each color and add them together.

Fun-a-Day has printable Valentine’s number cards you can use for all sorts of math activities, and kids can practice math facts (addition and multiplication) with these printable heart to heart games from Games 4 Learning. Or use dice to roll math equations and solve them with manipulatives on the Valentine’s heart mat from The Kindergarten Connection.

And because we were talking about pattern blocks recently, here’s a pattern block printable to make a heart shape from Stay at Home Educator.

Of course this is a topic we’ve covered a lot through the years, so if you need more inspiration, check out Easy Valentine’s Day Math Activities, Math and Science Related Valentine Activities and Valentine’s Addition and Subtraction Printables to name a few.

Valentine’s Day books for children

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The celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is important throughout Mexico and other parts of the world. Her feast day is Dec. 12, and the celebrations honoring her appearance to Juan Diego in 1531 begin a few days before that.

Whether you celebrate yourself or just want to share about the celebration at home or in your classroom, Las Mañanitas: The Beautiful Celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a good place to start. The book, by Ernesto Joel Vega Rosales and Jeanette Gonzalez Seneviratne, with illustrations by Dana Sanmar, tells the story of a family’s celebration of the feast day in both English and Spanish.

They prepare with a novena, which is nine days of prayers and preparations. The children, Lucia and Pablo, are given special outfits made by their grandmother that look like what Juan Diego might have worn when he saw Our Lady. The book describes the prayers that are made each day, such as a prayer for respect for life, for families and for the indigenous people of the Americas, to name a few.

As told in the book, Juan Diego was a native Mexican born near modern day Mexico City. His given name was Cuaauhtlatoatzin, which means “He who speaks like an eagle.” When he converted to Christianity his name was changed to Juan Diego, and as he walked to church he passed a hill called Tepeyac. One day he heard the birds singing especially beautifully and a voice called him to go to the top of the hill.

There he saw Our Lady of Guadalupe, who asked him to tell the bishop she wanted a chapel built in her name at the foot of the hill. The bishop asked for a sign that Juan Diego really saw her, and later she had him collect flowers that she blessed and take them to the bishop. When Juan Diego dropped the flowers, an image of Our Lady could be seen on his cloak, which is still on display in her basilica to this day.

The feast day is celebrated as mañanitas, which includes singing, indigenous music and dancing, and children presenting flowers to Our Lady. Juan Diego is remembered today as being humble, brave and faithful, and was the first indigenous American made a saint.

The book is colorful and tells the story in a clear way, and it’s fun to have it both in English and Spanish if you teach Spanish or speak Spanish at home or in the classroom. It’s a great way to learn the basics of the celebration and the story of Juan Diego and why he is still remembered today.

About the book: 40 pages, paperback, published 2024 by Loyola Press. Suggested retail price $14.99.

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