Valentine’s Day Math
The MCMI Team has gathered some Valentine's Day inspired math tasks just for fun! Hope you enjoy!
Pattern Block Hearts Heading link
How many different ways can you make this heart with pattern blocks? How many of each block? What fraction of the heart is covered by each color block?
How many different hearts can you make with pattern blocks?
Would You Rather? Heading link
Would you rather have a box of chocolates with 5 rows and 14 columns or 7 rows and 9 columns?
What is the Question? Heading link
Ask students to think about what questions you could ask about an image. Then have them solve it. This emphasizes the mathematizing of the world.
How about a Three Act Task? Heading link
M&M Spill https://kristenacosta.com/mm-spill/
A fun sized bag of M&Ms is spilled onto the table. Students are challenged to figure out which is the most and least common color? The same video could be used to challenge students to figure out how many M&Ms are in the bag.
Sharing Hearts https://kristenacosta.com/3_acts/sharing-hearts/
Two people are planning on sharing a box of conversation hearts. How many will each person get?
Share the Love https://gfletchy.com/share-the-love/
Two people are planning on sharing a bag of peanut M&Ms. The second act is shared via a bar graph or with the simple quantity.
Divided Hearts https://kristenacosta.com/3_acts/divided-hearts/
A container is filled with multiple boxes of conversation hearts. Did each box have an equal amount of hearts?
Other Problems Heading link
The Candy Box Challenge https://prairiecreek.typepad.com/files/math_night_all_problems.pdf
You are a box designer for a candy company. Your job is to find all the boxes possible for 24 candies. Boxes must be rectangular and candies are 1-inch cubes. Candies are packed one layer deep.
Candies MARS Task https://svmimac.org/resource/2007-candies/ (Grade 5)
This task asks students to work with part/whole concept in a practical context and to work with ratios.
What fraction of the Cheerios are heart shaped?
Donna’s Candy Shop MARS Task https://svmimac.org/resource/2019-donnas-candy-shop-grade-4/
This task asks students to solve multi-step word problems involving multiplication and division. Students are asked to figure out how many candies fit into different sized boxes and how much they will pay for a large sized box. Students are also asked to interpret remainders when figuring out how many bags of candy they can make using the parameters of the problems. Finally, they are asked to justify their solution.
Candy Dilemma http://69.74.236.250/math/Best_of_Math_I/pdfs/task129.pdf
I bought a box of candy for myself last week. However, by the time I got home I had eaten 1/4 of the candies. As I was putting the groceries away, I ate 1/2 of what was left. There are now 6 chocolates left in the box. How many chocolates were in the box to begin with? Be sure to show and explain all of your reasoning.
How many? Ask students to use an image or collection of conversation hearts to estimate. Take a smaller “sample” as a referent. Then estimate the total number of conversation hearts.
Fold an Origami Heart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=4fn73oAFbEY
Send a mathy Valentine to your students like Sara Vanderwerf
https://www.saravanderwerf.com/nerding-out-on-resources-for-valentines-day/