Heart Math

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• Tags: featured, math activities, Teaching Elementary Math, Teaching Graphs

What colors of candy are more popular in a typical bag of Valentine Hearts?  World over, kids pretty much enjoy receiving and giving Valentines to their friends on Valentine’s Day.  This year, make it a math learning experience, so the fun is included in the work.

Here is a Fun Idea for making it a Happy Heart Math day applicable to Grades 1-4 that encourage comprehension skills of:

Assessing, making predictions, and organizing

Counting, creating, adding, comparing

Listing/ recording data, and reading a graph

This activity is about making heart graphs, inspiring practice and comprehension for making graphs in general, and using fun hearts specifically.

Materials:

Bag of Multi-colored Candy Hearts, about 5/6 cups (1 cup worth for each 5 students)

Large Clear Glass or Plastic Vase / Jar

Plastic / Styrofoam Reusable Cups (1 for every 5 students)

Pencils and Pencil Crayons (matching colors to the Valentine Candy Hearts)

Graph Paper (2 pieces for each group of 5 students)

Prediction Graph

End Result Graph

Heart-Shaped Name Tags

Paper for recording data (1 piece for each group)

Glue Stick

Tape

1.  Divide Learners into groups, 4/5 in each group

2.  Each group guesses / predicts what color of Valentine hearts will be the highest number in the Vase of Hearts

3.  Learners of the whole class tape their Heart Name Tag on the Guess / Prediction

4.  Graph via their corresponding Valentine Color

5.  Each Group of Learners organize by color, a cup full of the candy hearts

6.  On paper, each Group of Learners records data by counting the hearts by color, and writing down the corresponding number of each color that was in their cup

7.  One color at a time, with colored pencils, one Learner from each group puts results of color numbers on the graph.

8.  Learners records all results on Results graph, one at a time, until all have had a chance to graph

Possible Questions to Ask and Share answers:

What color did you like the most?

When all results are added together, how many of each color are counted?

Who was closest to the true answer for numbers of each color? (Comparing Guess / Prediction Graph to End Result Graph)

Which colors were the highest to the lowest, in descending order?

Winners’ Prize:

Eat your favorite color Hearts!  Remember to Share if you and some others have the same favorite color.

And for One of our Fun Learning Math Games:

http://math-lessons.ca/activities/FractionsBoard4.html.