Holidays, like Valentine's Day, are a great time to breath some new life into your math centers! This Valentine's Day Addition Math Center is a fun way for your students to practice their addition skills. Using red and black colored dominoes, heart mini erasers, and heart number bonds make this a sweet center that can be used all February long! Be sure to grab the free Domino Number Bond mat and recording sheet HERE.
Setting up this addition math center is easy! You can store everything for the center in a Pink Bucket, so that all of the materials that students need will be readily accessible.
Inside your Pink Bucket you'll want the following items: Heart Mini Erasers in a Short Jar, Black and Red Dominoes in a Short Jar (I just pulled out the black and red dominoes from the set), a Dry Erase Marker and Dry Erase Board Eraser (I love these Googly Eye ones!), one Domino Number Bonds mat (download HERE), a Pink Top-Loading Dry Erase Pocket (you will put the Domino Number Bonds Mat into it), Copies of Domino Number Bonds recording sheet (download HERE) and a Pencil.
To play the center, students will pull a Domino from the Jar and place it on the mat. Then, they will use the Heart Mini Erasers to build the two parts onto the heart number bond and a Dry Eraser Marker to write down the whole as well as the addition sentence. Students can then record their results onto the Domino Number Bonds recording sheet.
I like having students use manipulatives like the Heart Mini Erasers to show the parts of the whole because they need hands-on, concrete practice with numbers! This kind of play is such an important part of math understanding and often we don't give kids enough time to explore numbers and build these foundational number skills. Once they have had time to use manipulatives, you can have them move to pictorial (using pictures or dots to show the number) and abstract (using the number only) practice. This is also a great way to differentiate the center.
This is such a sweet way to practice addition in February! If you're looking for more math centers ideas, be sure to check out these hands-on math centers!
