Investigations that relate to regular annual events.
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
Daylight Saving time is controversial, disruptive, useful, saves energy, increases energy consumption, is inconvenient … Imagine locations where neighbors are differentiated by one or two hours and experiment with what it might be like to live in a neighborhood of…
One more – Operation Gratitude – Halloween Candy Buy Back – Dentists often offer $1.00 per pound for non-opened Halloween candy. The candy is donated to Operation Gratitude which gives thank you gifts to soldiers and first responders. Is this…
Use your student’s Halloween enthusiasm to do a study on volumes. We’ve created an activity that asks students to calculate the volume of candy containers that are silly and intriguing. Skip the cone and the sphere to make this activity…
Ooooo. Scary! This is a slightly didactic activity on vampire bats. We’ve given lots of interesting metric and customary unit facts and asked students to relate those sizes to more familiar objects. Simply enjoy the season with this slightly creepy activity…
The Niña Columbus Day is a bit of an enigma that used to be celebrated throughout all of the Americas. Indigenous people were not treated well by the European colonization that began with Columbus’s voyage. For that reason, many U.S.states…
In the midst of another NFL season, we introduce students to Fantasy Football. Students first calculate football points given touchdowns, yardage gains and interceptions. They are then challenged to generalize an equation that gives a player’s total fantasy points. Students solve…
Who’s going back to school? – Students calculate the historical changes in U.S. population percentages of people who are going back to school and try to formulate reasons for these variations. 6.EE, 6.RP.3, 6.SP, 7.EE, 7.RP.3, 7.SP Does it pay to get…
Talk like a pirate day is September 19th. Bring some humor and marketing understanding into your class with this activity about a silly holiday that has had viral growth. What happens when you tell 5 people and then each of…
The official Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1 and doesn’t end until November 30th. Now Hurricane Florence is approaching North and South Carolina. Encourage your students to join the conversation, knowledgeably, by using our activity. Students read about hurricane classfications and…
In this short activity, students learn the meaning and history of Labor Day as they look for patterns emerging from the Labor Day dates over the past years. Students then use those observed patterns to predict future dates of the…