Investigations that relate to regular annual events.
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…
Use our current data on Halloween spending in America to engage your students in an analysis of 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.
*** Two activities *** When Columbus landed in Guanahani (renamed San Salvador, Bahama Islands by Columbus), he began the European settlement of the New World. Guanahani was inhabited by the Taíno people and it wasn’t really a new world. In this…
Sunday, September 19th is talk like a pirate day.
Bring some humor and marketing understanding into your class with this activity about a silly holiday that has had viral growth.
What is this holiday about? Are we celebrating the start of school? New cars? The end of summer? Students look for patterns in the history of Labor Day dates. They then use those observed patterns to predict future dates of the holiday.
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…
In this activity students work together to decide what equipment or supplies are necessary and how much they might cost. They research actual supply costs and finally decide how long they would have to work at minimum wage to pay for it all.
We have 13 possible activities for you to use to help honor and celebrate Mother’s Day in your class. Diapers, chocolate, Mother’s Day spending, and more …
Students have the guac ingredient list and the price of each ingredient in their usual quantities … like a bottle of lime juice. But we don’t need the whole bottle to make our dip. Students calculate the cost of the various ingredients and decide if making it is more expensive than buying it from Chipotle.
Thursday, April 22nd is Earth Day – We have 15 interesting activities that support recycling, conserving resources, noticing climate change and protecting our planet. The shape of Louisiana – At what rate is the state loosing land and wetland? Why is this happening? Will…
This activity is a investigation intended to get students and teachers to loosen up a little and appreciate how just considering a situation might lead you to a very reasonable approximation.
Too often students think that there is only one answer that is right and that the method for approaching that solution is also limited to the “correct” approach. Surely this fear of experimenting and guessing leads to math anxieties and the fear to reason and experiment.
Passover will begin this year at sundown on Saturday, March 27th. Jewish families will gather to commemorate the exodus of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The celebration begins with a traditional meal, the Seder, where the story of…
Three Saint Patrick’s Day activities. (1) The probabilities of finding a 4-leaf clover; (2) the necessary proportion to dye the Chicago river green for the day; and (3) nutritional evaluation of McDonalds’ Shamrock Shake. Plus, watch a great video to learn how to spot a 4-leaf clover.
We have 8 activities to help you celebrate π in your school and in your math class with activities that demonstrate how π was derived; visually show why π makes sense; show a surprising place where π is used; increase students ability to measure and long divide; applauds the talent of people who can memorize large strings of numbers; and lets students just have fun.
What’s your guess? How fast are the number of daylight hours changing each day? Are the changes dramatic or subtle? Students make guesses; compute how long, on average, the change in daylight hours should be; and finally understand the variability in our year of daylight hours.