Since it was Valentine’s week I thought it was only fitting to include some candy hearts into our classroom schedule. During Early Math Skills time I surprised my students with a fun activity and they absolutely loved it. First I gave the students a sheet with six large hearts on it. One by one we went over what color they should use for each heart. Once the hearts were colored in, I gave them a small scoop of candy hearts. Roughly 15-20 candy hearts works great. The disclaimer was made that the hearts were not for eating (yet) and that it was very important to follow directions. Each student then sorted their candy hearts according to the coloring sheet. Sorting is something we address on their report card so I was very pleased to see that all of the children did it correctly. After all of the sorting took place I passed out the graphing sheet. I explained the graphing portion to them and put my own sheet on the whiteboard so all of the students could see it. We did each color of the graph together and I helped the students with any questions that they had. Each time we graphed a color then we got to eat our candy hearts. This was a great strategy for keeping their attention! Graphing is a bit of a stretch skill for preschoolers but we graph on the board every week so my students did great. A couple of my students even caught on to the process and finished on their own. We all had a lot of fun with this project and I will likely make my own versions of this for other candy items for more graphing practice and a nice little treat.

The graphing sheets were found on Teachers Pay Teachers by Kindergarten Kreative.