Having Fun (And Learning) With Candy Hearts

I love incorporating holidays, themes, and seasons into our learning. It just seems to make it more fun for all of us. One of our favorite learning manipulatives for Valentine's Day is a bag of candy hearts. They can be used in so many ways and are an inexpensive way to bring some fun into your activities. 

We use candy hearts for so many different lessons that we have a little candy heart center set up. This way the lessons as well as the materials are easily accessible, which is helpful since we homeschool. My oldest can work on these activities whenever she feels like it without waiting for me to pull everything out. This would also be a great way to have your centers set up in a classroom, as it will allow several different activities to be switched out quickly and easily based on student needs.

One easy activity we do is building shapes with the candy hearts. I helped my learner out a bit by drawing the shapes on our chalkboard table and she traced them with the hearts. You could also simply draw the shapes, or let them try to create them on their own. This is great for fine motor skills, so Littlest One just practiced making a straight line. (He LOVES to do activities with his sister!)

 We also used these hearts for a great no-prep measuring center. We simply grabbed some materials from around our learning area, and I asked her how many hearts long she thought they would be. Then we measured the items and compared them to her guess, sneaking in a little estimation lesson.

My oldest did a fun science fair project this year on dissolving candy canes in different liquids. We simplified this a bit and used candy hearts instead of candy canes to make a fun Valentine's experiment. We kept it easy and used vinegar, hot water, and cold water.

We have hearts with letters and numbers on them, which I wrote about in this blog post. We use these hearts along with our candy hearts to practice some of our skills. One thing Bug is focusing on now is letter recognition and formation, so she "traces" her letters with the candy hearts.

She has already mastered counting to ten, but we are practicing her teen numbers by using candy hearts with the printable hearts used as counting mats.



The other day she surprised me by modeling addition problems with her princess toys. (Thank you Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!) Because she showed interest in this, we have begun modeling very simple addition problems using the number cards and candy hearts. 

We started by making a number sentence with the hearts and counting the correct number of candy hearts on each addend. Then we moved the hearts to the other side of the number sentence and she counted them together and found the correct sum.

If you're looking for some easy printable candy heart activities, I have this great Candy Heart Activities Pack in my TpT store. It includes 9 different printable activities to do with your kids. They can also easily be used as a center or glued into a manila folder to create folder games. The pack includes both colored and black and white versions of most activities.

This color sort is great for the littlest learners, or even those older ones that need a little review. It makes a basic activity a little more fun and festive.

If your kids are learning to count, these ten frame pages are a great way to add some hands-on practice.

Another way to practice both counting and sorting is to use this graphing mat. It also has an accompanying page of questions that can be answered based on the completed graph.

These pattern cards are a fun way to introduce patterns. There are 20 different cards, as well as some blank cards for students to create their own patterns. This is a fantastic way to assess whether your students have mastered the idea of patterns.

I think this is my favorite activity in the pack. It is a creative writing activity that allows students to imagine what kind of candy heart they would be. It also includes some questions you can ask your kiddos before they begin to design their heart, as well as two different types of versions for them to write on. This would look so cute as a class display!

This is a fun but simple STEM activity. There are ideas included in order to extend the activity and further understanding of using different methods in order to complete the stacking challenge.

These are great ways to incorporate a little sweetness into your learning using just a bag of candy hearts. Do you use candy hearts in any learning activities? Let me know what your favorite lesson is in the comments!