Data on the National Mall sites – Two data analysis activities about the National Mall. Who do we honor? – What people or events are included in the National Mall monuments? Students use fractions or percents to decide what they can notice…
Category: Holidays and Annual Events
Investigations that relate to regular annual events.
Will we be “in our prime” this year?
Every birthday I consider whether I’m in the “prime of my life” … like when I was 29 years old. Will this new year be a prime year? I hope so. Don’t use Google or Siri or whatever. Just see…
Times Square Ball Drop
Share the data in your class and ask what the numbers make your students wonder and what they can observe from the information. Happy New Year!
Winter and holiday posts (16 great activities)
Winter Solstice – Students appreciate how their latitude effects the darkness of their late afternoon location as they study the earth’s tilt and the logic of daylight hours. 7.G.3, HSG.C, HSG.GMD.4, HSG.MG.1 – Updated for 2018! Soda Santa – First students guess too…
How many lights should I buy for my tree?
Check out our Christmas Tree. We need to buy lights for the tree. Without calculating, guess how many feet of lights you will need. What information do you need to better estimate the number of feet of lights that you…
Wrapping presents on the diagonal
In this activity students determine if this method for minimizing wrapping paper is actually more efficient then the traditional method. For a hands on learning experiment, have students actually wrap a small rectangular prism using any available paper in both the traditional and diagonal methods. Then let them compare the two quantities of wrapping paper and decide which method uses less paper and by what percent.
Moneymaking holiday movies
Which movie do you think is the highest grossing holiday movie of all time? Students analyze holiday movie data. They will round, estimate, compare, calculate percent increase, consider the most appropriate graphical representation and graph the data.
Do I have enough wrapping paper?
I have to wrap this box. In this problem based activity students first guess and then try to calculate whether they will have enough paper to wrap this present without taping pieces of wrapping paper together. …with…
Shipping Crunch
Now that the shopping season has begun, it’s time to get the packages to your homes. Two big companies take care of a lot of that shipping. How do they manage that? The mechanisms for these two shipping giants are…
Egad! It’s already time for Hanukkah
Sunday evening, December 2nd, is the first night of Hanukkah this year. I think it was much later in December last year. Why isn’t it always on the same date? Students look at the Hebrew calendar and appreciate the incredible…
Thanksgiving, football, Black Friday, and giving
Not enough mashed potatoes – Use Brian’s famous mashed potatoes recipe to practice changing decimals to fractions; calculating ingredient measure for various-sized Thanksgiving gatherings; have students explain their reasoning; and to have students figure out how many servings 7½ pounds of…
Black Friday Deals
When shopping next Friday, students will be able to add some understanding and analysis to the trip after calculating savings in dollars and percents with this timely investigation.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade 2018
As we get ready for next week’s holiday, students can study a map of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, describe, measure and hypothesize why this route was chosen and then calculate how long each band will be marching and…
How should I cook my turkey?
Should I oven bake it, deep fry it or barbecue and smoke it? When do I have to wake up to begin preparations? How long will the cooking take? How much will it cost? How many can I feed? Will there…
Veterans Day 2018
As Veterans Day approaches, let your students learn about and appreciate the meaning of the day by analyzing the powerful data that we’ve supplied. Students can use our numbers to create questions for their classmates … questions that can emphasize the tremendous gift…