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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Halloween Dice Games for Kids

I volunteer at my local library pulling holds for children’s books, and the other day someone was looking for Over and Under the Snow, a lovely picture book about animals that hibernate and those who don’t.

It reminded me that now would be a good time to talk about hibernation in the classroom, and what animals do to survive the winter more generally.

Did you know that technically only warm-blooded animals hibernate? When cold-blooded animals do it, it’s called brumation, and insects experience diapause. Whatever you call it, it’s a slowing down of bodily functions that allows animals to lower their body temperatures and slow their metabolism so much they don’t need to eat.

We Are Teachers has a great page about different animals that hibernate (or brumate, or diapause) and you can enter your email address to get a set of free worksheets perfect for middle grades. Education.com also has a downloadable worksheet about hibernation, and you can find many more (including the migrate or hibernate worksheet above) from Worksheeto.

Little Bins for Little Hands has a great free printable pack about hibernation and hibernating animals. There’s a good list of animals that hibernate in the post, as well as some FAQs about hibernation.

Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds has lots of great ideas for planning a hibernation theme, including making a cave in the classroom, painting on ice, and lots of ideas for dramatic play, writing and other activities (and there are lots of freebies linked there).

Little ones will love these bear hibernation hat printables form Books and Giggles that include facts about hibernation.

STEMHax has collected a bunch of lesson planning resources about animals in winter, based on the book Animals in Winter. You’ll find links to videos about different animals featured in the book that you can use when talking about the book or more broadly in a winter animal unit study.

The Wolfe Pack Den has a free printable unit study and ideas for books to read and other things to do (with a particular emphasis on hedgehogs, if you’re into that).

And to bring in one more book recommendation from when my girl was little, Bear Snores On is another fun one, and you can read that one and bring out all your fun bear activities, like this adorable hibernating bear craft from Krokotak.

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