While candy hearts are usually associated with Valentine's Day, teachers can use them at the start of the year as a way for third-graders to get to know each other. Have students sit in a circle and put a bowl of candy hearts in the center. Tell students they can have up to five candy hearts, but for each candy heart they take, they must share one thing about themselves as they take the candy out of the bowl. The teacher can start first to give examples such as, "I just started at this school this year" or "I have one sister and two brothers" or "My favorite author is Dr. Seuss."
A teacher can use candy hearts as manipulatives for math games. Create a graph with the numbers one to six along each axis. Place candy hearts on each spot on the chart. Bring out two dice of different colors. Let one color stand for the x-axis and another stand for the y-axis. Let each child roll the dice and find the square represented by the coordinates. The child then gets the candy heart in that space and the teacher replaces it with another candy heart.
Candy hearts can be used as story prompts in a third-grade classroom. They also act as instant rewards and motivators for students to participate. The teacher can begin a story with a couple of descriptive sentences. The story can then pass to a volunteer or it can go around the circle with each child taking a turn. The next child picks a candy heart out of a bowl and adds two or three sentences to the story. At some point, the child must use the words on the candy heart. That child then gets to eat the candy heart, and the story passes to the next student.
A third-grade teacher can use candy heart games to introduce basic scientific principles such as classification. Divide students into small groups of three to five people each and give each group a bowl of candy hearts. Ask them to come up with two ways to sort the candy hearts into groups. Then have them make a graph for each of the different groups, recording how many of each type or "classification" they have. Examples of classification might include color, number of letters in the words or the sayings on the heart. Students might also choose classifications such as "mushy" or "friendly" based on their opinion of the saying printed on the heart.