11 math activities to use before the Thanksgiving break. Football, Turkey baking, Consumer spending, Macy’s Parade, mashed potato recipe doubling, and more …
Thanksgiving, football, Black Friday, and giving (11 activities)
Category: Math and Social Studies
Canstruction
In this 3-act activity, students look for a pattern to count these cans. Canstruction is an annual event that takes place just before Thanksgiving in cities throughout the world to raise money and gather food for local food banks.
Veterans Day
On Veterans Day we honor the men and women that have served in the Armed Forces of the United States. As of the the 2010 Census, there are 18.8 million living veterans. We found these maps that show where veterans…
Weird happenings at the end of daylight saving time
Strange happenings when one neighborhood observes daylight saving time and one neighborhood doesn’t. Do you get confused? Does UTC notation help?
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.…
Costume spending
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 of October 31st. This activity takes kids through finding parts of wholes as well as ratio, percents and proportion problems.
Climate justice – 14 activities
Last week millions of people marched in hundreds of countries worldwide to demand “climate justice”. Greta Thunberg speaking at World Economic Forum 2018 Choose from any of our 14 activities to let students quantify some of the results of climate…
Back to school activities
Who’s going back to school? – Students calculate the historical changes in U.S. population percentages of people who are going back to school and try to formulate reasons for these variations. 6.EE, 6.RP.3, 6.SP, 7.EE, 7.RP.3, 7.SP Does it pay to get…
Does it pay to get educated?
Updated! Why should students do well in school, graduate high school, or go on to college? In this activity median earnings by various education levels are explored. Students compare the earnings of a non-high school grad with workers who graduated…
So just print some more money!
What’s the big deal with our deficit? Do we actually borrow money to cover our debt? If we do, imagine the interest charges? Help your students (and their families) understand the meaning and repercussions…
Labor Day 2019
Updated! What is this holiday about? Are we celebrating the start of school? New cars? The end of summer? In this short activity, students learn about the intended meaning of Labor Day as they read about its origin. For the…
Who’s going back to school?
Updated! Students look at the past and present populations of the U.S. and the past and present population of school attendees to calculate the percentage of the population that are enrolled in K-12 schools. They are asked to draw conclusions…
The cost of going back to school
Back to school spending is huge and students might not appreciate what it costs to send them back to, essentially, their job of learning. In this activity students decide what equipment and supplies are necessary, estimate how much that will…
Bears Ears revisited
There is some beautiful land in Utah that was changed last year from federally protected land to Utah overseen land. The buttes of Bears Ears (shown above) and the surrounding territory contain over 100,000 archaeological sites and are sacred land…
Louisiana
We recently watched the approach of Hurricane Barry and worried about the fate of Louisiana. After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, what would another powerful hurricane do to this fragile state? What is it about Louisiana that causes so much…