Math Activities For Halloween.

 

It is that time of the year again.  Halloween is swiftly approaching and it is fun to take time in class to do a few activities to celebrate it.  Give the students a breather from their regular topics so their brains have a chance to process material while they get something different.  When I suggest Halloween activities, I'm not talking about simple word problems with halloween things in them.  I'm talking about real activities that look at the amount of candy sold and more.

Start with some activities that look at probability such as asking students about the probability of Halloween landing on a Friday or Saturday night.  Add in to that the probability of the holiday landing on the night of a full moon based on the moon taking 29.5 days to orbit. To extend this activity, ask if the event of landing on a Friday or Saturday is independent mathematically.

Another activity is making the students the person who figures out what candies go into a 100 piece mixed bag of Halloween candy.  They should list the types of candy they'd love to see in a bag, survey their class mates to see which candies are most popular with them, and then decide on which ones in what quantity will end up in the bag.  They can then calculate the ratios for each candy so that every one gets the type of candy they want.  Ask them how the ratios change if the bag only has 20 pieces in it.  You can extend this exercise by asking how much should the 100 - piece bag be priced based on whole sale prices and enough to make a profit when they sell each bag.

Don't forget pumpkins.  For students who are more advanced, ask students to figure out the equation that models the shape of their pumpkin or they can find the circumference of that pumpkin.  Most pumpkins are elliptical in shape.  It is easy to find pumpkins at the store that you can get for the classroom and the pumpkins can include a couple small decorative ones.

If you have tangrams in the classroom, down load halloween themed ones such as bats, pumpkins, or whatever you can find and let the students use those. This site has some that are free and can be downloaded. This is not the only site so do a search and find more.  If you don't have any tangrams, download a set from the internet.

To have students practice coordinate graphing, find a few halloween themed graphs and let them have fun. There are several sites on the internet that offer free graphs so you won't have trouble finding enough for students to receive different ones.  Some range from quite easy to much more complex and can be found for one quadrant or all four.  

In regard to those math puzzles that have pictures to represent quantities such as three ghosts added together equals 30, one ghost and two pumpkins equal 40, and three bats equal 15. So you know each ghost represents 10, the pumpkin is worth 15, and one bat equals 5.  You can find some redone on the internet or you could have students create their own versions either by hand or digitally.  Pixabay.com is a good site for free copyright free photos in vector style. 

Back to probability.  Prepare a large bowl of M & M's for each group.  Have students sort through the candies, dividing them up into colors, and then creating a tally for each color. Next have students add up the tally's for each color and make predictions for how many candies of each color are in a fun sized package. Finally, they discuss or write up a summary on were their predictions right or wrong and why they were off if they were wrong.  At the end, they can eat the candies.  

These are just a few suggestions for having some fun mathematically based activities on Halloween.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.