If you are the parent of an elementary school-aged child or remember your own experience in elementary school, you probably have fond memories of class parties for holidays like Halloween and Valentine’s Day. In high school, we generally drop the parties and treat these days like any other day; after all, we have content to get through! But why do we leave all the fun to the younger kids?
Whether you have a half-day on February 14th or a regular schedule, we wanted to share with you some Valentine’s Day themed math puzzles that we created. These are all designed to be thinking tasks that aren’t tied to a particular course, but give students plenty of opportunities to foster those mathematical practices we’ve been talking about. We have 5 puzzles for you to choose from that range from mild to extra spicy. Pick one or pick a few that you think your students will enjoy!
Puzzle A: How Many M&Ms? (Mild)
You’ll see those Valentine’s Day M&Ms show up in a few of our puzzles today! Growing up, my mom would always get my siblings and I a pack of these red, pink, and white M&Ms for Valentine’s Day, so I thought it would be fun to highlight them in some of today’s tasks.
In this puzzle, students get information about how 4 friends distributed a bag of M&Ms among themselves and must figure out how many each person ate.
Puzzle B: Valentine’s Day Mashup (Medium)
If you’re familiar with Mashup Math, you’ve probably seen puzzles like this before, where students must find the value of various icons. We made our own version today that encourages students to look for and make use of structure.
Puzzle C: When is Valentine’s Day? (Medium)
Does anybody else love puzzles related to the calendar? I find these highly accessible, interesting, and open for many different strategies depending on which tools students wish to use.
Puzzle D: Sweethearts (Spicy)
This is a visual pattern task that highlights MP2, MP7, and MP8. This would be a great task for students to work on on vertical non-permanent surfaces, and can be followed up by a debrief where students share how they saw the pattern. Encourage students to not just consider numerical patterns but to connect algebraic expressions with the visual (can students see an n x n square?). Using different colors to illustrate the various quantities in the figure can really help here!
Puzzle E: What Would You Do? (Extra Spicy)
This one is tough but compelling! We are purposefully not offering an answer key for this one, as students may differ in their approaches and reasoning, depending on what math content they have experienced so far. We would suggest letting students use technology or other tools for this one. Be sure to try this one out for yourself before giving it to students!
Solutions
Puzzle A: 78 M&Ms
Puzzle B: ?=50
Puzzle C:
Thursday11 or 12⅔
Puzzle D: (Answers will vary)
Figure 5 has 5^2+6(7)+1=68 sweethearts
Figure n has n^2 +(n+1)(n+2)+1 sweethearts
If you want to download all puzzles in one file, click here, or access the whole folder of files here.
We hope you and your students enjoy these puzzles!
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