Three Ways to Incorporate Valentine’s Day Fun with Math

On Valentine’s Day it is difficult to  engage students in instruction  which rivals anticipation of Valentine parties. Here are a few ways to incorporate fun with math instruction.

1. Give students a cotton swab with a dab of Vaseline. Tell them to smear their lips with the Vaseline. Have them kiss colored cm squared grid paper. The colored paper helps the Vaseline to show up better. Then tell them to choose their favorite lip print and find its area in square cm. Have students find the length and width of their kisses. Students can also measure their kisses in inches with a ruler. Arrange kisses on the wall in order from least to greatest area so all can see for added fun.

2. Give each student a box of candy hearts, and have students find the fractional amounts of each color. Students can build a bar graph, pictograph, circle graph, etc to represent the colors in the box. Further, you could incorporate probability by having students predict which colors of candy are most likely to be drawn from the box. Then have students do a probability experiment in which they pull a candy from a bag without looking.  Have them record their results on a frequency table.

3. Cut out different sized paper hearts and use candy hearts to find the area of the paper heart. Which student had the heart with the largest area? The smallest area.