Students examine Magic Squares for how they could help with math computation practice and having fun.
The Algebra of Magic Squares
Tag: 5.NF
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%…
Participation in Halloween activities
Students analyze 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.
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…
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.
Father’s Day, Juneteenth, and The Longest Day (summer solstice)
We have two Father’s Day activities, a Juneteenth activity, and a revised (and shortened) Longest Day/Summer Solstice activity.
Mardi Gras, 2022
In New Orleans revelers throw and collect purple, green, and gold beads. Students get a chance to examine the monetary and environmental cost of this bead exuberance with our unit pricing and recycling activity.
Bowl by the hour or the game?
Students consider the posted pricing of this bowling alley. What must they consider when choosing how to pay? What do you expect will be the best deal? How do you know?
Chuck E. Cheese needed to shred
Chucky E. Cheese needed to shred 7 billion tickets at a cost of 2.3 million dollars. Was this the real cost of shredding them?
YUMMY food for Passover
Passover will begin this year at sundown on Saturday, March 27th. Jewish families will gather to commemorate the exodus of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The celebration begins with a traditional meal, the Seder, where the story of…
Not enough mashed potatoes
Updated activity for Covid 19 appropriate Thanksgivings.
Students change decimals to fractions,
calculate ingredient measures for various-sized Thanksgiving servings,
explain their thinking in calculating these figures,
and judge how many servings could be created from 7½ pounds of potatoes.
Monster cake
First, students need to find the surface area that the M&Ms cover in order to approximate how many M&Ms she needs to finish her cake.
When Brian tried to make the cake, he mistakenly added too much peanut butter. Now all the of ingredients will need to be increased by some percent to insure that the cake maintains appropriate ingredient ratios?
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!
It might be a good year to see the Perseid meteor shower
Catching a productive meteor shower can be a stunning experience. On the evenings and mornings of August 11th, 12th and 13th there could be a very good show. A last quarter moon will leave the night sky growing darker each…