My Favorite Valentine’s Day Math Craft To Practice Place Value

Do you use learning crafts in your classroom? After trying them with my students, I can officially say I am a big fan! They’re such a fun way to get some targeted practice on a specific skill. Not to mention, my kids love crafting, so it’s easy to get them to buy in! Today I’m sharing my all-time favorite Valentine’s Day Math Craft to practice place value. I hope you enjoy it!

Benefits of Classroom Crafting

Before we dive into this particular Valentine’s Day Math Craft, let’s talk about why I am such a big fan of crafts in the classroom. Aside from the obvious benefit of being fun for students, there are many other benefits. Here are some of the highlights…

Fine Motor Practice

Do your students need help mastering how to use crayons, scissors, and glue? Mine too! Crafts give them opportunities to carefully color, cut, and glue down small pieces of paper. This is such great fine motor practice and will require careful attention to detail!

Opportunities to Follow Directions

Students in the primary grades are still learning to actively follow directions. This is something we must practice on a daily basis! Crafts are a great opportunity to follow directions because you can model the steps of the craft before allowing the students to begin and then have them take the lead.

Practice Key Skills in a Fun Way

This is my favorite benefit of all! Activities like my Valentine’s Day Math Craft allow you to target a specific skill in a way that’s outside of the normal practice routine. This is so great because we all know that practice makes progress, but repetitive practice isn’t always the most fun and engaging. Crafting presents the opportunity to practice in a new, unique format. This is a surefire way to capture student interest!

Now can’t you see why including crafts in your classroom learning routine would be helpful?! They are a game-changer in my room and I suspect they will be in yours too! If you’re ready to start crafting with your kids, check out this Valentine’s Day Math Craft to practice place value.

A Valentine’s Day Math Craft Your Students Will Love

Place value is a skill that we target all year long in first grade. My students need many, many opportunities to practice before they can achieve mastery. For this reason, I love using my favorite Valentine’s Day Math Craft to squeeze in some additional practice. It can be used in multiple ways and even includes everything you need to create a fun bulletin board to display the crafts too!

Making the Valentine’s Day Math Craft

This craft is a “lovebug” or Valentine’s Day-themed ladybug. My kids love it and the lovebugs brighten up the classroom when they are displayed! To get started, you’ll need to print a lovebug and speech bubble for each student. Each ladybug in the resource has a set of base ten blocks next to it and a number. There are options included for 1-10, 11-20, and 21-100, so you can choose which you’d like to target.

At the beginning of February, you might have all your students make lovebugs for 1-10, and then complete one of the more challenging ones later. Or, maybe you have students working at different levels and would prefer to differentiate that way. Either way, this is a great way to use the craft in different ways!

Once students have their craft pieces, they will identify their number and color the correct number of tens and ones to display the given number. Then they color, cut, and glue the number, tens, and ones onto the lovebug. Next, they will cut out the speech bubble. Finally, they will glue all the pieces to construction paper to finish it up!

Create a Bulletin Board Display

In my classroom, I like to split my students into groups by skill level and give them each a different ladybug. That way, everyone in that group is working on a different number. Once everyone has completed their crafts, I like to display them all on a large bulletin board. This is great for a couple of reasons.

First, it ensures I have at least one no-brainer, simple thematic bulletin board display in my classroom each month. This is a lifesaver for me as I tend to forget to swap them out! Second, the kids LOVE to see their work on display!

The good news is that I’ve made this bulletin board super simple to put together. All you need to do is select some pretty backing paper and a nice border, and add your Valentine’s Day Math Crafts to it! I’ve also included some cute letters that you can use to make a heading as well as pre-made mini posters that look nice in the center of the board if you’d prefer to go that route. Either option is super cute and makes it quick and easy to display student work!

Extra Practice for This Valentine’s Day Math Craft

Crafting is just the beginning! Inside this resource, I have also included a few extra practice pages that come in handy for squeezing in some more place-value work. There are:

• 2- Place Value Worksheets with Numbers to 10
• 2- Place Value Worksheets with Numbers to 20
• 2- Place Value Worksheets with Numbers to 100
• Answer Keys

The worksheets can be used as an extension activity before or after completing the craft or as an extra practice activity later in the week. They work especially well for early finishers, homework assignments, and even morning work! Best of all though, they feature the same lovebug theme that students will adore!

Use Math Crafts All Year Long

This Valentine’s Day Math Craft is one of my favorite, fun ways to practice place value in February. My kids love to create their own love bug crafts and I love watching them eagerly color base ten blocks to illustrate their number. It’s such a fun way to target place value! But, what if I told you that you could practice other math concepts with fun crafts all year long? Yes, it’s true!

I have a whole bundle of Monthly Math Crafts for primary learners. Inside each resource, you’ll find a monthly craft that aligns with the season or holiday, supplies to display on a bulletin board, as well as practice pages for that skill! Many skills are covered in the bundle including:

• Addition & Subtraction to 10
• Addition & Subtraction to 10 and 20
• Fact Families with sums to 10 and 20
• True or False Equations with sums to 10 and 20
• Adding 3 Numbers with sums to 10 or 20
• Word Problems within 10 and 20
• Place Value with numbers up to 100
• Comparing Numbers to 100
• Telling Time to the hour and half-hour
• Two-Digit Addition with and without regrouping
• Fractions: halves and fourths

These monthly crafts make it fun and easy to practice important math skills in a fun, new way. They are all low-prep and time-friendly as well! Just print and you’re ready to start crafting. And don’t forget, these are designed for learners at different levels! Each craftivity includes multiple difficulty levels, allowing teachers to easily adapt activities to their students’ needs. I know that once you add these into your routine, you’ll be hooked on crafting too! Head on over to my shop to check out the bundle and start crafting!

Looking for More?

Check out this Winter Math Craft post next to target word problems in your classroom!

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Make sure to pin this post on your classroom Pinterest board so that you can come back to this Valentine’s Day Math Craft!