Bake it, deep fry it or barbecue 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?
How should I cook my turkey?
Category: Holidays and Annual Events
Investigations that relate to regular annual events.
Not enough mashed potatoes
Using his famous mashed potato recipe, Brian has asked students to change decimals to fractions, to calculate ingredient measures for various-sized Thanksgiving gatherings, to explain their thinking in calculating these figures and to judge how many servings could be created…
Veterans Day
On Veterans Day we honor the men and women that have served in the Armed Forces of the United States. As of the the 2010 Census, there are 18.8 million living veterans. We found these maps that show where veterans…
Weird happenings at the end of daylight saving time
Strange happenings when one neighborhood observes daylight saving time and one neighborhood doesn’t. Do you get confused? Does UTC notation help?
Operation Gratitude – Halloween candy buy back
This is a great idea! Motivate kids to get rid of all of that candy for a good cause. Operation Gratitude and dentists are encouraging healthy eating, motivated giving, and offering a good use for all of that leftover candy.…
Halloween activities (14)
Fourteen activities that will please and intrigue your students as October comes to an end.
How long will it take you to trick-or-treat?
It’s Halloween and this is your neighborhood. How long will it take you to trick or treat at every house in your neighborhood? Possible conversation with students: How long will it take you to get from house to house? You…
Collecting the most candy
Students calculate the volume of candy containers; bags, globe, basket, can, cone, and bucket.
Which is the best candy deal?
Students are asked to decide which would be the best deal and the worst deal on mixed bags of candy. They can also create their own mixed bags. This activity has unit pricing, philosophy of candy collecting, and Excel if you would like to use technology.
How Much Halloween Candy Will You Collect?
Students consider how to determine the best candy haul prediction. The math ideas of measurement error and percent error are introduced. Students then predict their own Halloween candy collections numbers and compare their predictions to their actual haul using measurement and percent error.
Make a costume from a sheet
I’m going to make a costume pattern to sell. People can buy my plan and make awesome, long, full, scary, ghost costumes. This scheme will be so simple. Perhaps I’ll get rich! In this activity young students can reason about…
Costume spending
Use our updated 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.
Vampire bats
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…
Back to school activities
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…
Labor Day 2019
Updated! 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…