Thirteen provocative activities for this holiday season of Thanksgiving, football, and shopping.
Thanksgiving, football, shopping and giving
Tag: 4.NF
Yummy Pumpkin Pie
23 people are coming to my house for pumpkin pie and a hike. How many pies should I make? How much of each ingredient will I need? What quantities should I buy? Engage your students in estimation, multiplication of fractions and proportional reasoning.
Will this be an El Niño winter?
Students study charts that show variations from normal sea surface temperatures during El Niño years. They get the chance to more fully understand these events and understand the world-wide ramifications of an El Niño year.
Father’s Day and Juneteenth
For Father’s Day Thank you Mother and Father for all of those diapers – Students compare the cost of buying disposable versus cloth diapers. They estimate how much they cost their parents in diapers and consider how much they will…
How many scoops do I need?
In this 3-act activity, students need to invent a different way to measure the powdered chocolate than what the instructions dictate. How many 1/4th teaspoonsfuls of powder = 2 teaspoons? How many 1/8th teaspoons = 2 teaspoons? General rule?
Spring and Easter ideas – 6 activities
Dyeing eggs with food coloring – Students use the chart on the back of a food dye package to compare the strangely different recipes listed for coloring a cake, icing, or dyeing eggs. They look for and create equivalent ratios…
The Algebra of Magic Squares
Students examine Magic Squares for how they could help with math computation practice and having fun.
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?
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…
How much chocolate is left?
Fraction operations might be more interesting when it involves chocolate. Students reason and calculate what is left of these chocolate bars. The bars are the same size but are molded into different number of sections. Yum!
Mixing colors with food dye
It’s time to dye eggs … or make a rainbow colored cake. Proportions, saturation, hue and shade.
Drill bit fractions
Act One: Drill bits are measured by the diameter of the bit in inches. The drill bits below are ordered left to right in increasing size. The numerators in the fractions have been blacked out. What could the numerators be? Explain your…
Population Clock
Click here to see the Population Clock bigger in a new window. How in the world does this clock conclude that there is a net gain in the United States of one person every 14 seconds?
Triple Crown possibilities, 2015
Updated for 2017! American Pharaoh was the first horse to win not only the Triple Crown but also the Breeder’s Cup race = Grand Slam! Never done before. Involve your students in this soon-to-be event while reviewing fractions, calculating miles…
Losing team in the playoffs, 2015
Hey, the playoffs are about to begin. The best teams from the leagues compete to determine the champion. Must be some really great teams! But wait, the 2014-15 Carolina Panthers made the NFL playoffs by winning the NFC South with a…