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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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?
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…
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…
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?
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…
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…
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…
What do you wonder about these recipes for coloring? What would happen if I used the wrong recipe (i.e. cake mix instead of egg dying) for coloring my eggs? Do all of the recipes (cake, icing, and eggs) have basically…
Green, green river – They’re doing it again. In Chicago, the local plumbers union “dye” the Chicago River emerald green. Students learn the meaning of PPM (parts per million) and attempt to figure out how much dye is used to sufficiently…
Which Sweet Heart candies are the best deal? – Students decide which quantity of Sweet Heart candies is the best deal. Ratio tables, unit ratios, devising convincing arguments. 6.RP.2, 6.RP.3, 7.RP.2 Sweetheart Candies – unit rate and ratio activity using those little candy…