Students use our lego measurements to underestimate and over estimate this giant firefighter’s construction time and LEGO block quantity. Then students average their class estimates and compare to the real time and and quantity.
Lego Fireman +
Tag: 7.G.6
How many times bigger?
Listen to students initial thoughts as they wrestle through what “bigger” means … length? height? wheel-base? volume? Come up with guesses that are too high and too low. Show that the average of guesses is pretty close to actual.
Do I have enough wrapping paper?
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. I have to wrap this box. ⇒ ⇐ …
The size of chocolates
In time for Halloween, students assume that all of our pieces of chocolate are about the same thickness and proceed to approximate their volumes by comparing only their surface areas. Encourage them to create overlapping grids and count the fully and partially-covered cells or use the mean radius method.
Wrapping presents on the diagonal
In this activity students determine if this method for minimizing wrapping paper is actually more efficient then the traditional method. For a hands on learning experiment, have students actually wrap a small rectangular prism using any available paper in both the traditional and diagonal methods. Then let them compare the two quantities of wrapping paper and decide which method uses less paper and by what percent.
Collecting the most candy
Use your student’s Halloween enthusiasm to do a study on volumes. We’ve created an activity that asks students to calculate the volume of candy containers that are silly and intriguing. Skip the cone and the sphere to make this activity…
Canstruction
Just before Thanksgiving there are competitions all over the world to celebrate cool design, tricky engineering, and to donate a whole lot of food. How many cans does it take to build this structure? What information do you need to determine this? How did you determine your solution? What else did you notice that is mathematical?
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?
National Donut Day
Two activities to help celebrate National Donut Day
How many donuts is that = huge box of donuts to approximate.
How have donuts changed = torus volume measurements, formula intuition, and algebraic transformation of one formula into a second formula.
Three wrapping presents activities
3 activities about wrapping presents: On the diagonal, 3-act by estimation with iPhone, and judging sizes and needs by estimation with man and shopping basket.
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…
Giant macaroon nutcracker, revisited
Each year the Boston Ballet highlights the holiday season with the Nutcracker ballet. In 2014, the Boston Ritz Carlton Hotel’s chef, Andrew Yeo and his pastry team, created a gorgeous and massive Nutcracker cake of macaroons and fondant to celebrate the…
Shrinking Toblerone
They changed it. That is so not fair … or is it? You can check out a video news story on the delicious shrinking Toblerone bar here. Two sizes of Toblerone bars are now configured differently. How much did they…
How Many Donuts is That?
Act One: Take a look at the picture. What is the first question that comes to mind? How many donuts is that? What information would be useful? Act Two: See pictures below. Your students can view all of the pictures…
Foil prank
Robert Kaplinsky kindly contributed this post. We think it would make a great April Fools day activity. Check out his site for more great lesson ideas. Watch this movie with your class: foil_prank The Challenge(s) How much does it cost to…