Which should we order and why? Two 12-inch pizzas or one 18-inch pizza? Which will give you more pizza? More crust? Which is the better deal? Let’s do the math! The activity: more-pizza.pdf
Two 12s or one 18?
Category: Math and Food
Winter and holiday posts (16 great activities)
Winter Solstice – Students appreciate how their latitude effects the darkness of their late afternoon location as they study the earth’s tilt and the logic of daylight hours. 7.G.3, HSG.C, HSG.GMD.4, HSG.MG.1 – Updated for 2018! Soda Santa – First students guess too…
Weird wing prices
Clicking on this image will show it larger in a new window. Danny’s Wok in Philadelphia has a huge price list for ordering their famous chicken wings. Why did they write the prices this way? Do you see a pattern?…
Thanksgiving, football, Black Friday, and giving
Not enough mashed potatoes – Use Brian’s famous mashed potatoes recipe to practice changing decimals to fractions; calculating ingredient measure for various-sized Thanksgiving gatherings; have students explain their reasoning; and to have students figure out how many servings 7½ pounds of…
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…
Collecting the most candy
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…
Really big pumpkins and pie
Let your students marvel at World Record winning giant pumpkins as they use proportions to calculate the quantities of pumpkin puree and the number of pumpkin pies that could be made from one of these giants. To introduce the task…
But it didn’t sell?
A&W offered a bigger, tastier burger but it didn’t succeed in grabbing customers away from the hugely popular McDonald’s quarter pounder. The A&W third pounder hamburger cost the same as McDonald’s quarter pound burger but customers still didn’t bite.…
That’s a big tomato!
These Aussi tomatoes (the tomato on the left of all of the tomatoes) are huge. How much do you guess one weighs? Can you figure it out?
Only 10 cents for all-you-can-eat ice cream?
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 of the Dairy Queen franchise began with this ad in Illinois in 1938. I know…
Celebrate 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…
Can I get your order just right?
You can order a ton of combos at Chipotle. They advertise that there are 65,000 ways to order their meals. Do you think that is correct?
Earth Day, 2018 – 12 activities
Sunday, 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. Have you seen more Monarch butterflies lately? – Students read charts, do a little research, and make observations…
Pizza party figuring
In this activity students decide how to divide 2 pizzas amongst 6 adults and 3 pizzas amongst 8 kids. Fractional pizza parts need to be drawn and considerations discussed about which fractions are greater. Students interpret a fraction as division…
Passover, Easter, and April Fools day – 10 Activities
April Fools Day ideas – We have two strange mathematical riddles to decipher; a “why does this work?” task using the Ghost Whisperer; and Robert Kaplinsky’s Foil Prank. Take your choice! MP.1, MP3,4.OA, 5.G, 8.EE, 8.SP Peeps – Students estimate the number of Peeps sold…