We have tons (well, 16) of activities to bring to your class in this last week before the holiday break. Movies, science, art, cooking, economics, weather and the logic of calendars. Enjoy!
Before the holidays (16 activities)
Category: Math and Food
Whole lot of cookies
Jennifer Fairbanks from Hopkinton, MA sent us this picture of the cookies that she baked in 4 hours using 13 eggs and 5 cups of sugar. Do you see some math here?
Buy, buy, buy and ship (8 ideas)
Here comes Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. It’s a crazy time of year. Use all of that shopping to educate your students about good deals and how shoppers can be fooled. Is this really 70%…
Thanksgiving, shopping, football and giving
How should I cook my turkey? – Students judge timing, cost, tastiness, and quantity necessary as they plan for the feast. 4.MD.1, 5.NBT.7, 4.MD2, 6.RP.3, 6.NS.3, 7.NS.3 Great video on a deep frying fire with William Shatner. Shopping season already! – Students will…
Lots of Cranberries
In this activity, students learn about how cranberries are grown and harvested; estimate their size and quantities; and see what they can deduce from published statistics.
Halloween activities
14 Activities How well can you predict your candy haul? – Students consider how to determine their best predictions of their candy haul. The math ideas of measurement error and percent error are introduced. Students then predict their own Halloween…
The size of chocolates
In time for Halloween, students assume that all of our pieces of chocolate are about the same thickness and proceed to approximate their volumes by comparing only their surface areas. Encourage them to create overlapping grids and count the fully and partially-covered cells or use the mean radius method.
Giant Pumpkins 2022
Sts use proportions to calculate the quantities of pumpkin puree and the number of pumpkin pies that could be made from one of these giant pumpkins.
How much caffeine are you consuming?
We asked students to examine the sources of caffeine in their diets and calculate the number of servings that they actually consume.
How many gumballs are there?
Someone ate my cake
In this fraction operation and representation activity, students are asked to decide how much of my cake was eaten. Using fraction multiplication (or angle measure if that is where you need an activity) they find out how much someone owes…
But it didn’t sell?
<span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span> 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…
Sunday, July 17th, is National Ice Cream Day
In this activity, we’ve created two small tasks to challenge your students. If you know how much ice cream is eaten every year, how much is the “average” American eating? And, what will it cost me to make my own…
4th of July
Hot dog eating; Flag art; Fireworks on your calculator; Creating a 5-pointed star with one cut; and a possible new, 52-star flag.
Mallie’s latest Big Burger
Students learn about the initial weight of the giant meat patty and calculate the final weight of the patty after it is cooked. They decide what percent lean this meat must have been and consider how long it would take their family to eat the entire world-record burger.