The Measure of a Heart uses candy hearts to practice measuring perimeter and area.  After finishing the worksheet, use your candy hearts to measure the perimeter and area of other things around the house.

(In case you need to know…Perimeter is the measurement around an object and area is the measurement of an object’s surface.  To measure the perimeter of the hearts on the worksheet, place candy hearts around the edges of the hearts – the dark lines – and count how many it takes to go all the way around.  To measure the area, see how many candy hearts will fit inside the hearts on the worksheet.)

The Candy Pattern worksheet (which didn’t transfer to a jpg well and is MUCH nicer in the PDF download) allows your child to make various patterns using candy hearts.

(In case you need to know…each of the letters on the worksheet (A, B, C) represent a different colored candy heart.  So, for instance, an ABA pattern, where A represents pink and B represents green would look like: pink, green, pink, pink, green, pink, pink, green, pink.  Your child gets to decide which colors represent each letter of the pattern.)

You can find several other fun math related V-Day ideas at Googol Learning.

I’ve been pinning fun ideas on my Valentine’s Pinterest board, too!

For those of you interested in learning how to add more living math into your homeschool, consider Loving Living Math.

On the happier side of our day, see what the boys have been up to…

Caleb’s Activities

Candy hearts are a fun tool for finding area and perimeter.

They're also fun for creating patterns.

We worked on using Excel to create a bar graph from a handful of candy hearts, too.

You can find the area/perimeter sheet and patterning sheet on my Homeschool Launch page.  Look for The Measure of a Heart and Candy Heart Patterns.

Another fun math activity was Pascal’s Heart Triangle from Mathwire.com, where you can find several great ideas!  We also did a fun language arts activity called Heart Idioms.

Eli’s Activities

Have you heard of Confessions of a Homeschooler??  If you’re a mom of a preschooler, head over there right now!  She has SUPER ideas and FREE reproducibles that go along with the letters of the alphabet and seasons or holidays.  I can’t tell you how wonderful her ideas are!!  Just about every idea below came from her Valentine’s ideas and resources.

We sorted candy hearts into color groups.

We used candy hearts to make a physical bar graph.

Eli wanted to paint his graph while his bubby made the spreadsheet graph.

These patterns to match were wonderfully challenging for Eli!

Candy hearts come in handy once again!

Add glue and glitter to anything and Eli is HAPPY!

Usually, we have a fun V-Day themed meal, but none of us have been much in the mood for eating this week.  I’m hoping everyone is well by Sunday because the big kids are supposed to take part in preparing a spaghetti dinner for all the adults at church as a Valentine’s service project.  I hope your Valentine’s celebrations are healthier than ours!