Jennifer Fairbanks from Hopkinton, MA sent us this picture of the cookies that she baked in 4 hours using 13 eggs and 5 cups of sugar. Do you see some math here?
Whole lot of cookies
Category: Holidays and Annual Events
Investigations that relate to regular annual events.
Buy, buy, buy and ship (8 ideas)
Here comes Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. It’s a crazy time of year. Use all of that shopping to educate your students about good deals and how shoppers can be fooled. Is this really 70%…
Thanksgiving, shopping, football and giving
How should I cook my turkey? – Students judge timing, cost, tastiness, and quantity necessary as they plan for the feast. 4.MD.1, 5.NBT.7, 4.MD2, 6.RP.3, 6.NS.3, 7.NS.3 Great video on a deep frying fire with William Shatner. Shopping season already! – Students will…
Lots of Cranberries
In this activity, students learn about how cranberries are grown and harvested; estimate their size and quantities; and see what they can deduce from published statistics.
Halloween activities
14 Activities How well can you predict your candy haul? – Students consider how to determine their best predictions of their candy haul. The math ideas of measurement error and percent error are introduced. Students then predict their own Halloween…
The size of chocolates
In time for Halloween, students assume that all of our pieces of chocolate are about the same thickness and proceed to approximate their volumes by comparing only their surface areas. Encourage them to create overlapping grids and count the fully and partially-covered cells or use the mean radius method.
Participation in Halloween activities
Students analyze the ratios and percents of population, participation, and money spent in honor of October 31st. This activity takes kids through finding parts of wholes as well as ratio, percents and proportion problems.
Indigenous Peoples or Columbus Day
Sts learn a little history, question what they have learned earlier, and calculate how far off Columbus was from East India and his understanding of the actual circumference of the Earth.
Labor Day 2022
What is this holiday about? Are we celebrating the start of school? New cars? The end of summer? In this short activity, students learn about the intended meaning of Labor Day as they read about its origin. For the mathematical…
Will sending you back to school this year cost a fortune?
In this activity students decide what equipment and supplies are necessary, estimate how much that will all cost, confer with classmates to refine their lists, and then research to find out more accurately how much it will probably cost to send them back to school. This activity could be used for students in upper elementary school all the way to high school. It offers an opportunity for kids to estimate, research, reason, calculate and communicate with each other.
4th of July
Hot dog eating; Flag art; Fireworks on your calculator; Creating a 5-pointed star with one cut; and a possible new, 52-star flag.
Father’s Day, Juneteenth, and The Longest Day (summer solstice)
We have two Father’s Day activities, a Juneteenth activity, and a revised (and shortened) Longest Day/Summer Solstice activity.
Mother’s Day 2022 (14 ideas)
We have 14 possible activities for you to bring Mother’s Day into your classroom. Diapers, chocolate, Mother’s Day spending, surprise breakfast, and more …
What time should I wake up?
Surprise Mother’s Day breakfast in bed! I think she would like orange juice, scrambled eggs, biscuits, and hot coffee. I’ll add some flowers from outside and fruit to make it look fancy. Of course I want the hot food to all be hot when I serve her. When should I wake up in the morning to do all of this?
Guacamole for Cinco de Mayo
This activity involves recipe analysis, pricing, and comparison. Students gather the ingredients for a famous recipe and analyze how much it would cost to make it at home versus buying it at the restaurant.