Black Friday Activities

I realize most students are off today but that doesn't mean you can't plan something for early next week, especially since Monday is Cyber Monday.  The nice thing about looking at Black Friday activities is one can find them so students get practice reading, gathering data, and creating infographics or finding infographics so they can learn to read them.  They can learn to interpret graphs, practice finding discounts, etc. Black Friday sales are so math oriented.

If you do a quick search for Black Friday infographics, you'll find quite a few.  There is one about this history of Black Friday, including when the term was used to describe some Stockmarket crashes and its current usage. There is even one comparing Black Friday with Cyber Monday.

This lesson plan has everything you need from standards and lesson objectives to the actual worksheets.  This activity has students calculating the amount they will actually pay for Samsung or I  phones, a Sony camera, and a Dell computer.  The activity lists the price and the discounts, not how much they actually pay so students have to do the calculations for themselves.

Yummy Math has an updated activity for Black Friday that is similar. This one has students looking at a 48 inch TV, a 13.3 inch MacBook Air, and a lego building kit. Students are asked how much they save, the percent of discount, and at the end, they are asked to find some Black Friday advertisements on-line or out of the local newspaper.  Students are then asked to chose the deal they think is best, post it, and explain why it's the best deal.

Although this next activity is geared for grades 4 and 5, it could be extended to middle school or high school.   The first part of the activity is to divide students into small groups.  Each group will set up a pop-up store with school supplies, artwork, snacks, etc.  Once the stores are set up, the teacher conducts a short discussion on Black Friday before giving students 5 minutes to discount every single item in the store.  Once all the stores are ready, each student is given a certain amount of money to spend.  As they "buy" things, that money is given to the owner. The idea is to spend all the money if possible.  At the end, students discuss if they managed to spend all the money, what made it hard or easy, etc.  Since these are older students, they can talk about the amount of discounts, which items sold better, why, etc.

These are most of the activities I could find that didn't cost money or weren't for sale.  I did see one activity that looked interesting in a packet that looked interesting.  It has students create add flyers for Black Friday sales. Perhaps choosing a local store or an on-line one.  Most every town has some sort of store, even if it is associated with a gas station.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.