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.
Black Friday
Category: Holidays and Annual Events
Investigations that relate to regular annual events.
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…
Macy’s 2017 parade
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…
Veterans Day 2017
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 dilemma
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 how the hours of those neighbors will be different. DaylightSavingTimeHours.pdf
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.
Even more Halloween ideas – 12 tasks
How many houses can you get to – It’s Halloween. Time to trick or treat. How long will it take you to get to all of these houses? This is a very open-ended task, counting, trick or treating strategies, distance and more.…
Holiday candy sales
Which holidays are associated with candy? For which of those holidays is the most candy sold? What percents of annual candy sales does each holiday contribute? Consider using some independent think time, then small group discussion, then whole group discussion as…
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…
Ghost costume pattern
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…
Scary costumes
Every year Americans spend lots of money on Halloween and Halloween costumes. 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…
Which is the best candy deal?
We found big mixed bags of candy at really good prices … we think. Students are asked to decide which would be the best deal and the worst deal on candy. They can also create their own mixed bags. This activity…
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…
Columbus Day and navigating into the infinite-looking ocean
The Niña Columbus Day is a bit of an enigma that used to be celebrated throughout all of the Americas. Columbus’s mission and arrival are now thought to have not been as noble an endeavor in the way that indigenous people were…
Fantasy Football
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…