Thanksgiving Math

  Elementary teachers have it a bit easier than high school teachers because they can find more Thanksgiving math activities.  On the other hand, too many of those activities are actually worksheets.

Worksheets are fine but they are not very exciting for most of our students who have been raised in a more digital world.

I found a few activities that go a step beyond the usual plug and chug worksheets. I found a few "Thanksgiving logic puzzles" but they were like the emoji math but it used turkeys, cranberries and other traditional foods.

There are a few activities out there that require a bit more.

First is the Gobbler's Dilemma from  Matholicious which looks at opening the store on Thanksgiving day to take advantage of the Black Friday after Thanksgiving sales.  The activity requires students to create a payoff matrix, make conclusions based on the information, and see how the payoff changes over a number of years.  This site is a paid site but they give you a 30 day trial period so you can try out lessons before committing to the whole year.

I've visited Yummy math before.  This year, they have two or three activities which will interest older students while teaching them math.   You can begin with Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, which is televised nationally. This activity starts with a bit of history, then shows the parade route so students have to calculate the length of the parade route in meters, estimating the size of a balloon from a picture and from graphic information, along with some nice real life distance, rate, and time problems.

The second activity involves preparing dinner on the big day. It has students compare fixing the turkey in three different ways, baking, frying, or cooking on a barbecue grill.  For each method, there is information and questions and ends by having a student fill out a chart which includes their opinion of the best way to cook it.  I'm glad to see this chart because our school decided to serve real turkey instead of turkey rolls, so most teachers have volunteered to cook a turkey including myself. 

I am a vegetarian so I'm not very practiced at cooking turkeys.  I bought those oven bags to keep my oven clean and to cook the turkey faster in a disposable pan.   The information in this activity tells me to cook the turkey for 15 minutes per pound.  Yeah.  I am all ready.

Then finish off with a nice activity on Black Friday deals offered the day after Thanksgiving.  The activity specifically looks at the savings a person can get on  a big screen television, X-box limited console and a huge Legos pack if they are the first in the store.  To wrap this activity up, the student looks online for great deals to share with the class after the break.

There is always the age old activity of having students figure out the cost involved in preparing a turkey dinner.  Here it is best to use local prices rather than those found in the city.  I was at the store where I saw turkey advertised for $2.95 per pound.  Cans of pumpkin for a pie runs around $5.00 for a large can.  I hope you liked it.  I"m off to bake a turkey and a pumpkin for the pie I'm contributing to the community celebration.

Have a great day.