Valentine Science

I don't know about you, but I was EXHAUSTED when I left school yesterday.  Party days wear. me. out.

We did manage to get in a few spots of learning despite all the chaos.  

We did an experiment using the scientific method.  And best of all, it involved candy hearts and chocolate kisses!  

I got this idea and all the sheets for the activity from Primary Paradise's Packet Valentine's Day Candy Science Experiment.  It was well worth the purchase and I recommend you checking it out!

We started with this question -
Do valentine candies dissolve in hot or cold water?

Then the students made their hypothesis.  

(They will melt in hot and freeze in cold.)

Here is a picture of the candy in cold water:

Here is a picture of the candy in hot water: 

BrainpopJr. has a great video on the Scientific Method 

If you are interested in making a poster for the steps of the scientific method, you can get that for free from an old post of mine.  Just click on the picture below.

And y'all, I got the sweetest Valentine present -

You may not can tell from the picture, but the cellophane wrapper was missing.

and when I opened the lid, this is what I found:

PRICELESS!!!!

Happy Teaching!!!!!

Valentine Centers and a Couple of Freebies

Our Valentine centers are up and running and I thought I would share a few pictures of the centers we are working on this week.

Finding the Missing Part/Fact Families:

Students used Valentine erasers as manipulatives to find the missing part and then wrote the corresponding fact families.

Valentine Sentence Scramble:

You can grab this activity on one of my old blog posts:

Valentine Sentence Scramble

Suffixed -ed and -ing:

In this center, the students roll the cube to see if they need to add suffix -ed or -ing to a base word.  Then they had to use their word in a sentence.  You can grab a copy of this activity HERE.

Counting Dimes and Pennies:

I put plastic dimes and pennies in little heart containers.  The students simply count the money and record their answer.  I think I got this recording sheet from Sheree Peterson's blog but I couldn't find the link on her blog.  If I do, I will add the link later.

 ipads:

At this center, my firsties were using Splash Math.

I made this little noun and verb sort for review this week.

I gave each student a piece of manilla paper.  They wrote "Nouns" on the left and "Verbs" on the right.  They then cut out the pictures and glued them under "noun" or "verb."  After getting the pictures glued, they then wrote the words on their recording sheet.  You can grab a copy by clicking on either picture below.

The cute graphics are from My Cute Graphics.

Happy Teaching!

Valentine Holders

 

I got our Valentine Card Holders  made and they are on the wall waiting for those sweet Valentine cards to be placed inside.

Here are the directions if you want to make these:

To make big holders, I used two 12x18 sheets of construction paper (2 colors) and folded it in half and made a crease where the middle would be (see my finger)

Then I opened it up and made two folds (see picture below)

Take the pink at the top and fold it over 

Then fold the corners over and tape to the back.

Then draw lines to make a heart shape at the top 

(see picture below)

Cut out the lines and write names on the holders.

You could have your students decorate these with Valentine stickers or cut out hearts if you wanted to.

Happy Teaching!

  

Conversation Heart Compare/Contrast

We will be playing and eating doing educational activities with

 conversation hearts next week.

Of course we will be doing some graphing activities and I have found a couple of cute graphs that other bloggers have worked hard to create.  You can find candy heart graphs at Teacher Bits & Bobs or Mrs. Plants Press.  Just click on the following links to go grab yourself a copy:
                                      Candy Heart Graph

Candy Heart Freebie

After graphing the candy hearts, you could have your students do a little comparison activity using two of their candy hearts.

You can grab yourself a copy HERE.

Counting Dimes and Pennies Valentine Activity

For another center during Valentine week, I am going to put coins (dimes and pennies only since that is what we are working on) in each of these little hearts I picked up for $1 at the Dollar Tree. (I made 12 problems on the worksheet so I needed 2 packages.)

  Students will dump out the coins in the hearts starting with heart 1, record how many of each coin that was in the heart by coloring it in on their recording sheet, and then count how much money there is altogether and record their answer.

You can grab a copy of the recording sheet HERE.

Valentine Sentence Scramble

        I made this little sentence scramble for my firsties to do.

I am still on the lookout for some cute little containers to store each set of sentence cards in but they may end up in plain little baggies.  *sigh*

You can get a copy Here.

No Homework Poem and Valentine Part Part Whole

Here's a little Valentine I will be sending home on Valentine's Day.  I got the cute heart border graphics free from From the Pond and if you wish to use these graphics for yourself, you can find them by visiting http://frompond.blogspot.com/ and following the links provided to the graphics store. 

 Use candy conversation hearts for this Part Part Whole activity. 
You could use this a couple of ways.  Give each student some conversation hearts and let them pick up a handful and show the parts of the number they picked up or you could give them a set amount and have them show all the ways to make that number.

Grab yourself a copy Here.

Valentine Venn diagram and ABC order

Hey friends!  I am going to post at least one activity every day this week that I will be using the week of Valentine's Day.  I intend to use all of these ideas as centers but some of them could be used as whole group.

        Venn Diagram - students sort the hearts by ruffles and stripes:

 I will be laminating a copy of the ABC colored hearts below and using it as a center.  There is a recording sheet to go with this activity.

You can grab a copy of both activities HERE.

Check back tomorrow (evening probably) to find another Valentine activity to do with your class.