Category: Holidays and Annual Events

Investigations that relate to regular annual events.

Veterans Day, 2023

Population and Density maps of where Veterans live. What can you observe? What do you wonder? How do they compare?

Yummy Pumpkin Pie

23 people are coming to my house for pumpkin pie and a hike. How many pies should I make?  How much of each ingredient will I need? What quantities should I buy?  Engage your students in estimation, multiplication of fractions and proportional reasoning.

14 ideas for Halloween

We have 14 great activities to use in your class as we near Halloween. Candy sales; Participation in activities; Creating a sheet ghost costume; Bats; Figuring chocolate volume; Dia de los meurtos; and more …

Vampire bats + Mosquito eating bats

Two activities. Vampire bats = We’ve given lots of interesting metric and customary unit facts and asked students to relate those sizes to more familiar objects. + Mosquito eating bats = Students compare a bat’s weight to how much he can consume in one night. They calculate how much they would need to eat to consume a comparable proportion of food.

Nobel Prizes

The Nobel Prizes have just been awarded.  Alfred Nobel was a chemist, engineer, inventor, and businessman.  He left most of his fortune to endow 5 prizes for “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. How much money is awarded?

Indigenous Peoples or Columbus Day

Two activities – Students calculate how large Columbus must have thought the circumference of the Earth was if he reached the East India when he landed in the Bahamas + history of who lived there. In the second activity, students use latitude and longitude to analyze the distances Columbus’s trip involved.

Will this be an El Niño winter?

Students study charts that show variations from normal sea surface temperatures during El Niño years. They get the chance to more fully understand these events and understand the world-wide ramifications of an El Niño year.

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.

Ice Cream Day – July 16th

We have two timely activities … Updated! All the ice cream that you can eat   All the ice cream that you can eat for only 10 cents!  Wow, that’s a great deal!  How great a deal was that? The history…

The 4th of July

Flag art, creating a 5-pointed star with one cut, fireworks on your calculator, hot dog eating contest, and a possible new, 52-star flag.

Summer Solstice, the longest day

In this activity, students compare length of daylight to place latitude while studying the correlation, evaluating Excel generated formulas, and appreciating the significance of this date.