I have to wrap this box. 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. …with…
Do I have enough wrapping paper?
Tag: 6.G.A
Really big beach towel
Act One: Check out this beach towel! What do you wonder? What would you like to know? Miami artist, Misael Soto (pictured on the left below), created this giant art project to make a statement about people sharing territory at the beach.…
How much pee is in that pool?
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…
Mother’s Day is coming up
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…
Earth Day, 2018 – 12 activities
Sunday, 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…
Greasing light poles
The Philadelphia police are being proactive about keeping their enthusiastic Eagles fans from being reckless as they celebrate Super Bowl outcomes. So, the police departments have been frosting the city light poles with Crisco shortening to help discourage fans from…
BIG Snickers bar
Wow! This snickers bar is huge! Act 1 – Big question = How many times bigger than a regular Snickers bar is this? What info would you like to know? How are you going to judge how much bigger this is…
A gorgeous, glittery Mother’s Day card
Uh oh! How do you find the area of a heart? Get your students to help you calculate how many sequins you’ll need to order for this mother’s day class project. The activity: BejeweledMother’sDayCard.pdf Mother’sDay-card-blank – If you want…
Alarming ice cracks on Brunt Ice Sheet in Antarctica
A new, fast-growing ice crack is forcing the Halley VI British research station in Antarctica (shown above) to be moved. Fear of a huge break-off from the ice sheet is alarming not just to the scientists on the station but to…
Civil rights marches, how do you count a crowd?
On October 16, 1995, perhaps a million black men gathered for the Million Man March on Washington. This was 32 years after Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his historic “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial to 250,000 civil…