Check out our Christmas Tree! We need to buy lights for the tree. Without calculating, guess how many feet of lights we will need. What information would help you to better estimate that length? (Give students time to consider what info they have and what they need)
Activity: ChristmasTree.pdf
It is really dark out now. Why is that?
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. Is latitude the central angle of the Earth?
The activity: winter-solstice2022.pdf
Potato Latkes - updated for 2022 - Little potato pancakes are a traditional food for Hanukkah celebrations. In my mom's recipe, they are salty, deep fried, and delicious. In modern latke recipes the salt and fat are decreased. How do the two recipes compare? 6.RP.A, 7.RP.A, MP6, MP8
Hanukkah is soon - updated for 2022 - Hanukkah begins on Sunday, December 18th. Students appreciate the incredible mathematics involved in creating a calendar (Hebrew calendar) that aligns both the moon's revolution about the Earth and the Earth's revolution about the Sun. 5.NBT, 5.OA, 6.SP, 8.SP, S-IC
Holiday Soda Displays - We found creative soda displays made up of 6-packs of Coca Cola products. Ask students to guess the quantity without counting. Come up with a reasonable range for the number of twelve packs. Find numbers that are too high and too low. 3.MD.5, 3.MD.6, 3.MD.7, 4.NBT.5, 5.NBT.5, 7.SP.5, 7.SP.7a
Clicking on this picture will show it larger in a new window.
In this problem based activity students first guess and then try to calculate whether they will have enough paper to wrap this present without taping pieces of wrapping paper together.
Clicking on this image will show it larger in a new window.
I have to wrap this box. ⇒
⇐ with this wrapping paper
The weather forecasters tell us what the wind chill temperature will feel like. How do they figure out that number?
In this activity students use the National Weather System chart to gauge wind chill, examine the patterns that correlate increasing wind and/or decreasing temperatures, use wind chill numbers to estimate possible wind and temperature factors, and generally become familiar with this sort of interpolation and calculation. Also check out this windchill calculator, which you can use to quickly find the windchill for a given temperature and wind speed.
The activity: WindChill.pdf
Play!
The activity: MagicSquares.pdf