Rather than eat all that candy sitting around the house after trick-or-treating (or another holiday), why not put it to good use? These fun candy math and science lesson ideas will keep your kids busy, happy, and learning! What will we do with all this candy? Honestly, most of the candy that comes in this house after trick-or-treating eventually gets pitched or given away. There's only so much I can allow my kids to eat before the mom guilt kicks in. However, during the few days we still have loads and loads of candy, we always have fun with living math and science lessons! Candy Math and Science Candy graphing is for all ages! Concrete graphs are graphs ... Read More
Christmas Glyphs: Fun Graphing for December
A glyph as it relates to math is a pictorial representation of data. That sounds like a pictograph, doesn't it? Rather than put pictures in the form of a graph, though, a glyph actually becomes the picture as it's created based on provided criteria. Ooh. That sounds hard! I promise, glyphs aren't hard at all. In fact, they're easy enough for a kindergartener to complete - yet fun enough for students much older. Following glyph legends, children build step-by-step pictures to represent things about themselves. That's it. Once the glyph is complete, others can use the legend to understand what the glyph says about the creator. I especially love the math/art ... Read More
Paper Airplane Graphing
Target Age Range: Upper Elementary - Middle School Skills Covered: measurement, record keeping, averages, graphing, technology, keyboarding, writing, art, invention This lesson is so much fun - especially for boys! 1. Have your child design several different paper airplanes. 2. Give each plane a name. 3. Go outside with the planes and a measuring tape. 4. From the same spot, throw and measure each plane three times. Note the three measurements for each plane. 5. Determine the average flight measurement of each plane. (Add all three measurements for each plane together and divide by 3 to find the average.) 6. Use one of my favorite FREE websites, Create A Graph, to transfer ... Read More
Graphing: Facebook Birthdays
Target Age Range: 4th-12th grades Skills Covered: gathering data, graphing, technology, keyboarding When I used to teach in a classroom, it was easy for my students to gather large amounts of data for graphing...there were 24+ people in the room at all times. As a homeschooler, it takes a little more creativity to gather data from a large group of people. We have emailed friends and family with questions before, but getting responses takes time. Enter the world of social media! There are many ways to gather quick information from friends on Facebook or Twitter. By simply asking a question, you're likely to have quite a few answers in a matter of minutes. Even better, a ... Read More
Valentine Fun
Today is bittersweet for us. As you'll see below, the boys and I have been having lots of fun celebrating Valentine's Day. However, today is Mahayla's 13th birthday and she's sick. She and I were supposed to be going to CIY Believe together later this afternoon with the Jr. High youth group, too. Oh well, there will be plenty of time for celebrating birthdays and worshiping our Lord when she's better. I just hope I can convince her of that. On the happier side of our day, see what the boys have been up to... Caleb's Activities You can find the area/perimeter sheet and patterning sheet on this post. Another fun math activity was Pascal's Heart Triangle from ... Read More
Math and Science – Bridges
Our "math break" continues to bring lively and rich lessons! One of the projects from Hardhatting in a Geo-World concerned bridge construction. We had to make six different bridges and test their strength. After completing the activity and filling in the chart provided, I had the kiddos show their findings with homemade graphs. The book talked a little about why some bridges were stronger than others, but we wanted to know more. I found this very cool site linked from THINK's blog. We also decided to complete her Bridge Challenge. Caleb's first attempt (not so strong.) Caleb's second attempt (much stronger.) Mahayla's bridge. Tomorrow - we're off ... Read More
Living Math – Graphs Galore
October/November = lots of falling leaves and lots of candy. What better to do with both of those things? Math, of course! Whether you have extra M&M's, Skittles, Smarties, Runts, or just a big bunch of assorted candy bars, take a few minutes to turn those sweets into more than cavities. Even little bitty ones can sort candy, place the pieces on a blank grid, then color a bar graph. As the kiddos get bigger, all the more fun they can have graphing their candy. Click here to check out my candy math ideas! And don't forget all those autumn leaves! Make a nature walk even more productive by collecting a sack of leaves to sort and graph. Literal or concrete graphs are not only ... Read More
President’s Day Math
I just wanted to share what a hit this math activity was last week. Using the information sheets that the website provides, the kids had to fill out a chart to show how many presidents have come from which states. Then, they used graph paper to create a bar graph to show the information from the chart. Fun activity! ... Read More
Floor Graphs
I've got a fun math activity for you! It's important to me that my children not only know how to read graphs, but know how to create them as well. Mahayla is a pro at gathering information and creating her own graphs on paper. Caleb is just beginning, though, so I wanted him to make a "concrete" graph to be sure he understands all the parts and why they are where they are. Here's how the lesson went......We decided on a topic - animals. He decided to gather data from 40 people by asking what their favorite animal is. He then came up with a list of several animals he would let them choose from. Then, he wrote the animal's names on a piece of paper and tallied the "votes" as they ... Read More