At the amusement park, our friend, Jason, was intrigued with this sign for drink deals. He and his family come often to the park and, during the summer when it is hot, naturally drink a lot. Which is the best…
Drinks at the Fair
Math and Food
Ideas for Father’s Day
Thank you Mother and Father for all of those diapers – Which is a better deal, cloth or disposable diapers? How much did you cost your parents in diapers? In the future how much could your kid’s diapers cost? Help…
Earth Day, 2017
Saturday, April 22nd is Earth Day There is so much to bring to your classroom to support recycling, conserving resources, studying climate change and protecting our planet. McDonald’s moves toward Antibiotic-free chicken – What will the effects be on costs at the restaurant, costs in…
Chicken to share
Sweet Easter mathematics
YUMMY food for Passover
Passover will begin this year at sundown on Monday, April 10th. 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…
Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17th
Green, green river – They’re doing it again. In Chicago, the local plumbers union “dye” the Chicago River emerald green. Students learn what PPM (parts per million) means and attempt to figure out how much dye is used to sufficiently color…
Valentine’s Day activities
Chocolate-raspberry heart-shaped cake – Students build a heart cake and use ratio information to find the quantities of cake and icing resulting from increased dimensions. A parametric heart … with love – Students use unit triangles and manually calculate sine and cosine…
Sweetheart candies
Here’s some more Valentine’s Day fun. How many dollars worth of sweet hearts candies are sold each Valentine’s season? What more could kids want than Sweetheart candies, problem solving, critical thinking, and number sense reasoning? Enjoy!
Holiday candy sales
Which holidays are associated with candy? For which of those holidays is the most candy is 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…
Chocolate heart-shaped raspberry cake
Students calculate base area or volume of cakes made from 2 cake pan sizes and observe how the volume of the cake changes with the increased pan size. This is an activity intended to demonstrate that the volume increase is…
Activities for Super Bowl and Groundhog Day
Typical Super Bowl scores – Students reflect on the mean, median, and mode losing scores, winning scores, and range of scores from past Super Bowls as they try to predict this year’s scores. They decide how the next pair of scores…
Super Bowl cheesy pretzel poppers
… A little more delicious work for the Super Bowl. Students follow a recipe that involves “cutting the cheese” block, figuring how many servings, estimating how many times they need to multiply the recipe by to make enough pretzel bites, and…
Pre-winter holiday activities!
Christmas tree lights – Students first guess how many feet of lights would be required to decorate this tree. The class finds the mean and median of those guesses. Then they brainstorm and refine their guesses. Lastly they figure out how…
It’s latke time
In my family it is traditional to eat latkes (Yiddish for potato pancakes) at this time of year. They are fried in a lot of oil and salted generously. My mom’s latkes were wonderful but they couldn’t have been good for…