Valentine’s Day in 5th Grade

I recently changed up my math week and have fallen in love with centers in 5th grade. I tried it last year, and it was just such a nightmare. It just didn’t work for what I was doing and what that group of students needed. It made me hesitant to try again, but if there is a group of kids to test it on, it is my current group of kids. They are seriously angels.

I was kind of worried they might think centers are kind of dumb (just keeping it real), but they absolutely loved it. To be fair, I thought really hard about what they would be doing, so they didn’t think it was dumb. I was also very intentional about making sure they were all doing very relevant fifth grade math skills. It worked!

I have now permanently made Thursdays our math centers day. If I get really good at it, I might do our typical math workshop on Mondays and Wednesday and centers on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I don’t think I can or should ever go to only centers, so I love the idea of half and half.

I tested it out last Thursday, and it was amazing, so Valentine’s Day was the perfect day to try out more holiday themed centers. It went great again this Thursday.

Here is what we did.

The first math center they did was a color by equivalent fraction heart. I got this from Eleanora at TPT. I use these sheets all the time and this was definitely a favorite of the day. They require students to color fractions that are equivalent to simple fractions they are given. You can purchase them by clicking here.

The next one, and my student’s favorite math activity ever, is coordinate graphing battleship. I just bought sweetart candy hearts (because the actual candy hearts are super disgusting, in my opinion). I actually used St. Patrick’s day grids that I got from Appleslices teacher because her pack has all 4 quadrants. You can purchase her pack here.

The directions for the game, came from YoungTeacherLove’s Valentines centers. I used her stuff for the rest of my centers.

One of my boys got in the spirit with his candy placement.

This is from YoungTeacherLove’s Valentine’s Day pack. It’s her crack the code game where students have to solve division problem to solve the Valentine’s Day code.

Another activity from YoungTeacherLove’s Valentine’s Day pack is a decimal compare. Students have to solve and compare decimal multiplication cards and write their answers on a sheet. Great practice for decimal multiplication.

The last center from YoungTeachersLove was her Valentine’s Day word problem skills. Lots of great practice on a variety of fifth grade math skills, with a Valentine’s Day theme in each question.

I always have a computer rotation. We pretty much always use Mr. Wolfe’s Interactive Whiteboard. He has lots of great links to a variety of math games. Some aren’t always so great for getting math practice (and they ALWAYS find those games) so I always find the games I want them to play, and give them a list of activities they can choose.

On a less educational note, student had to bring in boxes made out of stuff found in their homes. They could NOT go out and buy anything. We learn about renewable resources in fifth grade, so it was a good way to tie that in. I got this great idea from Appleslices when I student taught with her.

This was the first place winner.