Do you ever wonder what to do with all of the Valentine’s Day candy that your children collect this time of year? We put it to good use by doing this simple graphing activity, using the popular candy conversation hearts.
Materials:
- one box of candy hearts per child
- one printed copy of the Valentine’s Heart Graph per child
Start the activity by talking about graphs and how they help you to easily read and compare numbers. Introduce the concepts of rows and columns and invite them to take out one heart at a time and place it in the correct color column.
As they are putting their hearts in place it is fun to read and discuss the text in the hearts and to make hypotheses about which colors they will have the most of and which colors they will have the least of.
When the graph is complete teach them how to “read” their graph by asking how many hearts they have of each color. If you are doing this project with more than one child, it is also fun to have them compare results and draw conclusions about which colors in the boxes are the most and least commonly found.
Of course you have to finish with a taste test!
I love your graph. We did a conversation heart math lesson yesterday. You can see it on my blog.
Thanks for the great download. I just printed it off and I’m doing it with my son’s class tomorrow!!