Teaching math concepts in the classroom through interactive activities and games is one of the more successful ways to help children retain and understand how math works. This game can be used to introduce new concepts or enforce concepts already being taught through visual and auditory use to help the style of each individual learner. Through teacher observation an assessment of each individual child can be made while they partner up and play the game.
Valentine's Day Addition and Subtraction Math Game Materials
The main materials for this activity are provided below. However, some additional materials may be used.
- File Folder (for creating a file folder game for the math center or for each pair of students)
- Laminating machine (to laminate each cut out for longer use)
Valentines Day Math Game Tips
Directions are provided on the first page of materials. However, keep in mind this game is very versatile and can be modified to fit the needs of your classroom and lesson plan. Be sure to focus on auditory learning as well as visual. The best way to encourage auditory learning is by having the student creating the problem do it through word problems. Some examples are:
- For addition, "Today I ate 6 grapes and 5 slices of orange for snack time. How many items did I eat all together?"
- For subtraction, "Miss Smith had 8 pencils on her desk but 5 were borrowed by students. How many does she have left?"
- For multiplication, "Jimmy brought 4 boxes of heart chocolates to class. If each box has 10 chocolates inside, how many does he have to pass out?"
- For division, "Julia made 24, or 2 dozen, cookies. She packed 4 cookies into separate boxes. How many boxes of cookies did she pack? How many cookies were left unpacked?
- For more examples, and other great resources when teaching math, visit Math and Reading Help for Kids.
The visual aspect of this activity is when the first player lays out the problem with the heart cutouts. For the addition example above, player 1 will find the "6" heart, the "plus sign" heart, the "5" heart and the "equal sign" heart. Player 2 will find the heart with the correct answer, and the problem will be laid out on the table. If player 2 chose the correct answer, she gets to color in a square on the grid. Then the players switch turns. Player 1 will have a different color when coloring the grid, and when it is decided that game time is over, the student counts her squares and tallies the score at the bottom of the grid. Whoever has the most squares colored in, wins!
ChristaCarol Jones - A stay-at-home mother of two and preschool music teacher during the school year, ChristaCarol thrives on finding or creating educational, ...
