Valentine’s Day graphing printable

I have two different versions of this Valentine’s Day graphing activity. When I originally wrote this post my kids were in preschool, and so our math was confined to learning to count and very simple math. Now they are older and long past being ready to graph.

 

Supplies for the older kid Valentine’s Day graphing activity

Valentine’s Day graphing printable (2 pages, traditional color graphing and more advanced word graphing), box of candy, something to write with

The easy version is what I did way back when I was teaching with my first and second graders.  Count how many of each different type, graph, and compare.  My kids whipped through it in less than 5 minutes.

The other side was trickier because they had to recognize what is an acronym and what might be text speak.  Especially since my kids don’t have cell phones yet.  But they had lots of fun comparing their Valentine’s Day graphs, and at first they was great consternation when they realized some candy boxes had more than others.  Great consternation.  Then the boys tried the candy and decided it tasted horrible.

 

This is our original Valentine graphing back when the kids were in preschool

Preschool Valentine’s Day graphing

Materials needed: box of conversation hearts, ten frame (basically a grid with two columns of five rows, you can see it in the picture)

 

 

Most of you have probably already done this, or are aware of this Valentine’s Day graphing activity.  Back when I was teaching we did a more complicated version in my first and second grade classrooms.  But, here’s the simple version.  And like I said my printer wouldn’t work that morning, so we just used some 10 frames.
1.  Give each child their box of Valentine’s candies and let them dump them out.  Ideally they haven’t dumped them out and poured them into one big bowl before you’ve done this.  Oh wait, that’s just what my kids did.
2.  Have them choose which one they think they have the most of.  In this pictures Superman guessed he had the most of blue.  Now, in reality I think he did this because he likes blue best, but hey who am I to spoil his predicting fun.

3.  Now take each color one by one and put one in a square to count how many you have.  It’s always amazing to see the disparity of colors in the conversation heart boxes when you just randomly grab some.  I think Superman and Batman both had one purple and then Princess had 12.  It was kind of funny.

 

4.  Next we estimated which jar could fit the most hearts.  I had two different types of baby food jars, some of the glass ones and some of the plastic.  We discovered the plastic jar held more.

And finally came the best part of this math experiment.  We tested which ones turned our tongues different colors.

As you might guess that was their favorite part of the whole activity.  And wow is that an unattractive picture of me.  Seriously.  They were rather disappointed that most of them didn’t really change the color of their tongue.

Follow Ticia Adventures in Mommydom’s board Valentine’s Day for kids on Pinterest.
And, just for the sake of it, we did do a few other things this week.
We’ve learned a lot about Texas.
We made some rocket cars.
We dealt with grief.  Okay, that one should be present tense, and it also brings up all sorts of difficult questions about death.  The link is to the questions about my Dad’s death, but I’m not quite up to posting about their questions about Uncle Sam’s death.
So, it’s been busy here for the past few weeks.  It’s funny it really didn’t seem in the midst of all this that we really did all that much, but when I look back over, we actually did.

Oh, and here’s the wonderful thing Princess figured out how to do……  There’s 10 pictures of me wincing as she brushes my hair.