I Love Math: Valentine's Day Center Rotations

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I am so proud of all of the work my kids have been doing in math, so I thought we would take a break and enjoy some Valentine's Day math activities.

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To begin, I gave all of my students a Valentine's Day coordinate graphing activity during our 5th grade wide morning work.  I knew this would not be something that could be completed in a short amount of time, so I asked that they bring this to math.  As students went through their rotations, they took this with them to continue working on as they had extra time.

Once they came to class, we began by completing an Estimation 180.  This activity asks students to make an estimate of the number of Conversation Hearts are in a box.  What's fun, is that there is a short video showing Mr. Stadel counting the candies in his box.  The kids love seeing how close they are!

There were six rotations that we worked through during math:

• Sneaky Valentine's Day Code - I created a few Valentine's Day themed coded messages using the Cypher Wheel found on this blog.

• The Heart Building Challenge - this challenge asks students to create a heart using Lego building blocks.

• Would You Rather - for this challenge, I give students fake money and candy hearts, but not enough to solve the problem.  There needs to be a little team work!

• Conversation Heart Math - I used a conglomeration of ideas from this source, along with the Estimation 180 (above) and a blank Google Spreadsheet for us to compare the number of hearts in each of our boxes.  With the time constraints, we did not have time to look at the data we gathered, so we will discuss it tomorrow in class.

• $1.00 Conversation Heart Challenge - I got this idea from "The $1.00 Word Riddle Book".  Students would determine the value of the phrase on their Conversation Hearts using the value A=$.01, B= $.02, etc.  I also allowed the use of a calculator (this was supposed to be fun, after all).  We did actually find a phrase worth $1.00, but it took quite a few attempts.

• BreakoutEDU:  Anti-Love Potion #9 - Finally, our 6th center was a Breakout Box.  I took the Breakout lesson provided on the website and changed it to fit my needs.  Basically, each group rotated through this Breakout and attempted to solve the puzzle to help the class unlock the box and determine the code to save the day.  If you have not heard about BreakoutEDU, you might want to visit the site to see what the excitement is all about!

We just managed to get through all 6 of the rotations just in the nick of time!  Fun was had by all!