February 2004 Tip
February is a wonderful month, isn’t it! It is filled with many opportunities to integrate mathematics into other subject areas. With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, I thought that it might be appropriate to share a few “heart-felt” math activities that could be used at various grade levels. This is by no means an exhaustive list. It is merely presented to springboard your imagination or remind you of other similar activities stashed in files somewhere that haven’t been opened for a while. At any rate, hope that you and your students have a LOVE-ly February!
CANDY HEARTS - Give partners or groups of 4 a plastic bag of about a cup of candy hearts. Select from the following activities based on the age of your students.
- Graph the various colors.
- Graph the types of punctuation - exclamation marks, question marks, periods.
- Graph the number of different sayings on the hearts.
- Graph the frequency of vowels in the sayings on the hearts.
- Use the hearts to estimate and measure length (including perimeter), area, weight, capacity of various objects.
- Find the ratio of the various colors to the total number in the bag; to one another.
- Find the probability of drawing a specific color or saying from the bag.
- Use the candy hearts to cover the area of a large heart (master provided) in such a way that same-color hearts never touch.
PAPER HEARTS - give students scissors and construction paper. The old folded-in-half and cut-on-the-fold heart is an obvious symmetry activity. Here are a few twists.
- Cut half of the heart only. Glue the half to a piece of paper, then draw the other half of the heart.
- Cut a heart. Check to see if the heart will tessellate. Make snips here and there until the heart will tessellate. Create a tessellation with the snipped heart.
- Cut half of a heart in red and the other half of a heart in black. Make multiple sets. Use these to create models of adding and subtracting integers (the black half-heart representing negative number, red half-heart representing positive.)
- Students cut hearts from construction paper (large enough for them to write on). Cut each heart in half. Write a word problem on one half and the number sentence used to solve the word problem on the other.
- Estimate how many hearts it would take to fill a string from one side of the room to the other. Discuss, estimate, then cut hearts and string them across the room. Talk about why their estimate was or was not close.
- Create fraction pictures from pre-cut hearts (so that the “whole” will be the same size for all hearts). Students cut the hearts in half, then generate pictures. They must calculate the value of their pictures.
- Extension: students create a picture that is worth a specific value.
- Heart conversions give students a set of pre-cut hearts. Have them measure the length of various distances or objects, then convert from hearts to inches, feet, yards or millimeters, centimeters, meters.
Here are a few websites you might peruse. Be sure to read through them before giving to students to make certain they are appropriate for your age group.
- http://www.applesforhealth.com/valentinehis1.html
- http://www3.kumc.edu/diversity/other/valentin.html
- http://www.annieshomepage.com/valhistory.html
- http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/.../ - This is a Yahoo link that has lots of other activities, poems, etc.
So many activities, so little time. Have a great February! See you next month!
Ms Fritzie
