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…
No joke. Saturday was National S’more Day. Thanks to Maggie Hefferman, Newton, MA educator, for the idea of this post. To help you celebrate this strange new holiday, we’ve asked students to do a little math to help quantify…
If you have a set of cubes for your classroom, this would make a great group hands-on project. Its an old puzzle but the activity deserves a revisit. Below are two straight-on images of my stack of blocks. Can you…
After chlorination, it has been hard to measure the quantity of pollutants in pool water. A Canadian chemist, Xing-Fang Li, has found a marker for urine that chlorine doesn’t disguise. In this activity, students calculate volume of several pools, change that…
Revised! We’re watching another Stanley Cup playoff now. Will there be any really long games during the playoffs? In 2013, a Stanley Cup playoff match between the Bruins and Blackhawks went into 3 overtimes. People stayed up way too late…
Mother’s Day by the numbers – Mother’s Day is right around the corner and this means big business for the greeting card and floral industries. Let your students practice averages, percents, and large numbers while they analyze the statistics on Mother’s…
My dog, Jorge, has just turned 14 years old. He still seems like a puppy to me but I wonder how old he is when compared to a human’s age. He’s definitely not like an 98-year old human (14 years…
Monday, 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…
This day is known for pranks and puzzles. Try one of these on April Fools Day. Ask students to analyze where I made my mistake. PerplexingProblem.pdf For members we have solutions. PerplexingProblem-solution.pdf CCSS: MP.1,…
More for π Day! On a cold and snowy day in Boston, two chefs created a huge Key Lime pie to remind the frozen people of the Northeast how tasty and warm the Keys of Florida are. After you…
Shamrocks in Ireland are actually be 3-leafed white clover, trifolium repens. If you are lucky, you can sometimes find a four-leafed clover. How rare is finding a 4-leafed clover? How hard do you have to look? What size area of clover must you examine to find one? + 2 more Saint Patrick’s Day activities
Eleven activities! Do the the movies that are nominated for the Best Picture at the Academy Award make the most money?
Parametric graphing, heart area, chocolate volume, making a heart-shaped cake, pie charts of holiday candy sales, how many cans in a can heart canstruction, where do all of those flowers come from, best deal on bagged candies, making a cardioid … Valentine everything!
Which movie do you think is the highest grossing holiday movie of all time? Students analyze holiday movie data. They will round, estimate, compare, calculate percent increase, consider the most appropriate graphical representation and graph the data.
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…
