Year of the Earth pig Lunar New Year begins on Tuesday, February 5th. This will be the year of the Earth Pig. The year name is a combination of 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches creating a sequence of…
Lunar New Year 2019 – Year of the Pig
Tag: patterns
Egad! It’s already time for Hanukkah
Sunday evening, December 2nd, is the first night of Hanukkah this year. I think it was much later in December last year. Why isn’t it always on the same date? Students look at the Hebrew calendar and appreciate the incredible…
Consumer spending 2018
Consumers in the U.S. spend a lot of money. In this activity we look at historical data to see if there are any patterns in our spending. How does our holiday spending show up in these graphs? What accounts for…
Hurricanes
The official Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1 and doesn’t end until November 30th. Now Hurricane Florence is approaching North and South Carolina. Encourage your students to join the conversation, knowledgeably, by using our activity. Students read about hurricane classfications and…
Labor Day 2018
In this short activity, students learn the meaning and history of Labor Day as they look for patterns emerging from the Labor Day dates over the past years. Students then use those observed patterns to predict future dates of the…
Fibonacci coloring
Let your students simply enjoy coloring our designs or artistically play with the whole creation of Φ designs. Simply coloring our Fibonacci patterns might allow students to ponder the Fibonacci sequence (while they learn more about its beauty) and just…
Memorial Day 2018
This Monday Americans will celebrate Memorial Day. Who are we honoring? How did the holiday come about? Isn’t Memorial Day usually on May 30th? Students learn a little about the history of the holiday, analyze the possibilities and patterns for when…
Opening Weekend – Avengers: Infinity War
Can you tell from its opening weekend how much the new movie, Avengers: Infinity War, might earn in theaters? This activity can be used anytime and is especially timely when there is a new blockbuster movie released. We’ve left blank…
Hexadecimal coloring
Probably most of us have heard of and even used hexadecimal color codes. Don’t you wonder why their number descriptions really make sense? In this activity we first ask students to color in our Golden Spiral by giving them the…
Opening weekend The Black Panther
Can you tell from its opening weekend how much the new movie, Black Panther, might earn in theaters? This activity can be used anytime and is especially timely when there is a new blockbuster movie released. We’ve left blank spaces…
Days are getting longer
What’s your guess? How fast are the number of daylight hours changing each day? Will the changes be dramatic or subtle? Students make guesses; compute how long, on average, the change in daylight hours should be; play with a cool…
Wind chill
When the weather person talks about wind chill did you ever wonder how they calculate that number? In this activity students use the National Weather System chart to gauge wind chill, examine the patterns that correlate increasing wind and/or decreasing…
New Pirates of the Caribbean – How profitable?
The fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie opened on Friday, May 26th. Your students might be looking forward to seeing this movie and motivated to understand the investment expenses and profit expectations. Our data and questions will help them judge this…
Passover macaroons
Passover begins this year on Monday evening, April 10th, 2017, with a Passover seder dinner. Passover is one of the three high holidays in the Jewish religion and celebrates the Exodus of Jews from slavery in Egypt. Let your students…
Saffron and paella
In order to cook Paella (a delicious Spanish rice dish) I needed to buy Saffron spice. It was hugely expensive. So, I’ve decided to start a business of growing saffron and becoming immensely wealthy.