Pre-Thanksgiving activity ideas

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 potatoes would make. 5.NF.6 , 5.NF.6 , 6.RP.1 , 6.RP.2 , 6. RP.3 , 7.RP.1

How should I cook my turkey? – Students judge timing, cost, tastiness, and quantity necessary as they plan for the feast. 4.MD.1, 5.NBT.7, 4.MD.2, 6.RP.3, 6.NS.3, 7.NS.3  Great video on a deep frying fire with William Shatner.

Construction This is a 3-act activity about an annual display of creativity, engineering, and design as artists contribute cans of food for the shelters and food banks of their city.  Students analyze, look for patterns, discuss solutions, and finally quantify the number of cans. 4.MD.3, 6.EE.1, 5.MD.5, 7.G.6, HSF.LE.2, MP.2, MP.3, MP.7

Delicious pumpkin pie – Students estimate, multiply fractions and use proportional reasoning as they calculate the ingredients necessary for my wonderful pie. 4.MD.1, 4.NF.4, 5.MD.1, 5.NF.4, 5.NF.6, 6.RP.2, 6.RP.3

Black Friday again – Students calculate savings in dollars and percents as they analyze this year’s sales. 6.RP.3 , 7.EE.2 , 7.EE3

Consumer Spending – Students look for patterns in an historical view of when we spend money.  They look for spikes in spending and drops in spending and hypothesize which trends will repeat and which movements are a one-time event. 6.SP.5, 8.F.5, HSS.IC.6, HSS.ID.3

4th down – should you punt kick or go for a field goal? This is two activities.  One is on graph reading. This is perhaps suitable for younger students.  The other activity is on data analysis and the creation of this chart.7.NS, 7.SP.C.7, HSS.MD.A.2, HSS.MD.B.5, HSS.MD.B.6, HSS.MD.B.7

Watson Saves – Watch the video with your class and use our activity to motivate students to figure out who ran a greater distance by using the Pythagorean Theorem.  In the video Teddy Bruschi says that Watson must have ran about 120 yards, maybe even more.  Use the video and/or our activity to see if Teddy’s estimate is about right. 8.G.7, G-SRT.8

NFL Home field advantage  Students use an infographic to compare NFL team home and away wins.  Students consider the best home team, the best away team and consider if NFL teams really do seem to have a home field advantage. 6.RP.1, 6.RP.2, 6.RP.3, 7.SP.4

NFL Franchise Values A look at the actual value of each NFL team.  Reading graphs and then looking at the concept of mean through fair sharing or redistributing.  Concepts and authentic data… delicious.  6.EE.9, 8.F.3, HSF.LE.A.1

 

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from Yummy Math http://www.yummymath.com/2015/pre-thanksgiving-activity-ideas/