Valentine’s Day Math Activities Your Students Will Love (EP25)

Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Elementary Math Chat!

First of all, I have to say Happy Birthday to my dad. I know he’s listening, and today is his birthday. So, Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today’s episode is a special Valentine’s Day-themed episode. It is right around the corner, believe it or not, and I’m going to share one of my favorite activities I did on Valentine’s Day. It’s one with a real-world connection, it’s one that my students loved, and I know yours well as well.

Let me first start with a quick overview of the activity. By the way, this is free in my TPT store, and I will have that link in the show notes for you. Essentially, this is a restaurant simulation where your students will pair up with a partner, and they play the role of both the server and the customer.

On the customer side, they order from a real menu and then use paper money to pay for their meal. On the server side, they find the total of their partner’s meal, and then they calculate their change, and they’ll get a chance to play both the customer and the server.

This is a pretty special experience for them because some of them have little to no experience even ordering from a menu or going to a restaurant. And even if they have, they still get a kick out of being able to do this in school.

This simulation comes with three different scripts they can follow. One’s a little easier, one is kind of in the middle, and then one’s a little more challenging. It also can be paired with any menu. To make mine even more realistic, I used actual menus from O’Charley’s. I literally walked in one day and asked them if they could donate any old menus they had to my classroom, and they gave me I think 10, which is plenty because I did this in a small group.

They were so nice about it and did not hesitate one bit. So, I guarantee you, if you go in somewhere, they’ll be more than happy to give you a few menus. Of course, nowadays, you can go online and print them. But it is a little more fun and it seems a little bit more realistic to them if you have the actual menus.

Now, I mentioned before that there are three different scripts that they can choose from. The first one is the simplest, and it only has them order a drink and an entree. The second one has them order a drink, entrée, and dessert. And then the third one, which is the most challenging, has them order a drink appetizer, entrée, and dessert.

Obviously, the simplest script is going to take them less time, and then the more advanced script will take them longer. So, you can make that decision for them based on how much time you have. Or what I did was I put them in three different piles, and they could choose which script they wanted to use. Each script also includes room for the server to add and subtract when finding their total cost and the change.

One thing I do recommend is to give the student who is playing the customer a calculator, and they will use that to check the server’s work. It also gives them something to do while they wait.

As I said before, I did this in a small group. If you have enough menus, you could do this in your whole group and have students pair up and do it all at the same time. But I think things might get too loud if they’re all talking at once, and it might take away from the whole experience. So, I do recommend trying to do it in your small group center, and it’s going to take two days. It’s too much to get done in one day. But it’s nice because then you’re not rushed, and you can set everything up and leave it up for the next day.

The other thing to consider is the type of menu that you want. If you teach third grade, you’ll want to find a menu with whole numbers only, which means you’re likely going to have to find one that’s made for the classroom, not from an actual restaurant. But if you teach fourth or fifth grade, your kids do know about decimals, so you’ll be able to use menus from real restaurants.

As far as the setup goes, the only thing you have to do is print the scripts and provide the menus. I put my scripts inside sheet protectors and had my kids use dry erase markers, and that way I could reuse them every year and not have to print them again. So, if you want to keep it super simple, just print the scripts and print the menus.

But if you want it to feel more like a restaurant, there are a couple of extra things that you can do. The first thing you can do is provide paper money for them to practice paying for their meal with, figuring out their change, and actually counting out that change with the money.

For example, let’s say the total cost of their meal is $18.45. If they’re playing the role of the customer, they will have to decide what bill to pay with, and most likely they’ll choose the $20 bill. Sometimes they might count out $19, but I like when they choose the $20 bill because then the server has to subtract $18.45 from $20, and that’s something that they often struggle with. So, this is really good practice.

So, the server is going to figure out that they need $1.55 in change. So, they’ll have to go through the money and give them one dollar and fifty-five cents. Obviously, this is going to take a little bit longer if you do have them count out the money and find the change, but it’s really good practice.

Another thing you can do to make it more realistic is decorate your teacher table and make it feel more like a dinner table. I’ll put a few pictures in the show notes so you can see how I decorated my table.

I basically took a pink plastic tablecloth and put it down over my table. And then I put a burlap table runner along the middle, and then I also added pink and gold paper hearts, which were actually left over from my bridal shower. Thanks, Mom, for making those for me. I even put fake flowers and battery-powered candles on the table. So, it was this little nice romantic dinner that they were about to have.

One more fun tip, and this is one I didn’t think about until maybe the last few years I did this, when it was time for a new group of students to come to my table, I would go up to them and I would tell them that their reservation was ready. And just like in a real restaurant, if we were running late and things were taking longer than expected, I would just tell them, you know what, we’re super busy, but your reservation will be ready soon. They always loved that and got a kick out of it.

Because it was Valentine’s Day, when they finished playing the role of customer and server, I would give them a little special treat, and this would serve as my Valentine for them. I bought the Jolly Rancher suckers, those were always my favorite, and I put them in a basket, and they could grab one when they were finished.

My class loved this so much that they asked if they could do it again as part of an early finisher activity, and I thought that was a great idea. So, I put the menus and the scripts in my early finisher tub just in case they wanted to do it again. Some even did it during indoor recess, so that tells you how much they enjoyed it.

Again, this activity is free in my TPT store, and I also have the link in the show notes in case you don’t want to go searching for it. If you do decide to give this a try, don’t forget to leave me a review on TPT and let me know how it goes.

So, that will take care of what you do in your small groups that day. But if you need something for them to work on while they wait, since this is a Valentine’s Day-themed episode, I wouldn’t do it justice if I didn’t mention my Fraction and Decimal Heart Craftivity.

I never got to do these with my own students because I made it last year, and I had already left the classroom. But I did send it to my former teammates, and I was there subbing for one of them one day, and I saw them in the hallway, and they looked so cute! It is a super low prep activity. All you have to do is print the hearts, and then they can do them on their own.

There are several different templates that they can choose from. Some include tenths, some include hundredths, some are less than one, and some are greater than one, and they pick their own decimal to start with. It just has to be less than three.

Within the hearts, they represent the decimal as a fraction, they color in a visual model, they plot it on a number line, and they also write it in word form. So, it is a great way to showcase what they’ve learned about decimals, and it can become a bulletin board for the month of February.

So, now you are all set for Valentine’s Day! You’ve got a small group activity, and then you have something that they can do on their own while they wait.

If you are interested in the Fraction and Decimal Heart Craftivity, it will be linked in the show notes along with the restaurant simulation, and that takes us to today’s teaching Tip of the Week.

Today I’m sharing a teaching tip for comparing fractions using common denominators. This is by far one of the most challenging skills to teach for both fourth and fifth grade, and the tip I have for you today will help them understand why common denominators are so important.

I learned about this tip from a former teammate when I taught fifth grade back in the day. Not sure she’ll ever hear this, but if you’re listening, Carol Taylor, this is one I learned from you!

The first thing you’ll do is have all students stand up and ask them if it’s fair to compare their heights from least to greatest the way they are now. Of course, they’ll say yes. Next, have a few students very carefully stand on their chairs, and then ask them if it would be fair to compare everyone’s heights the way they are now. They’ll say no, because some students are standing on chairs, and some are on the ground. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Then have the rest of them do the same and get on top of the chairs. Ask them one more time if it’s fair to compare their heights. They’ll say yes this time because they’re all standing on the chairs. This simple activity reinforces that as long as they are standing on the same thing, which represents the denominator, they can compare their heights, which represents the numerator.

But if they are standing on different things, you can’t compare their heights. Just like if fractions have a different denominator, you can’t compare their numerators. Isn’t that such a creative way to get them thinking about common denominators? I was so grateful that she shared that tip with me because I was really struggling to teach common denominators. So, hopefully, that tip helps you as well.

Well, friends, that is all for today’s episode. Have an awesome week and I will see you next Tuesday!