Lesson Plan: Thanksgiving Math

Lesson: Thanksgiving Math

Ages: 6-15 (by varying the difficulty)
Materials: Printable Worksheet, Grocery store circulars/trip to the grocery store, Play Money (optional), Math Manipulatives (optional)
Concepts: Money math, Multiplication (quantity X amount), Comparison shopping, Calculating Tax (older children), Money management, Charitable giving
Increasing the difficulty: Increase the difficulty by having the child calculate tax, reducing the budget ($150, for example), shopping at only ONE store (deciding among brands), calculating actual servings from the nutrition information from the label and buy as close to 12 servings as possible, calculate total calories per person if one person ate all of the items on the menu (the exception being only one or two desserts instead of 4, like ours)

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This lesson has been adapted from THIS LESSON.

Instruction: The students will have $200 to buy enough groceries to feed 12 people for a Thanksgiving feast. The child can look through the circulars (or take a trip to the grocery store) to choose the food for the feast and record the cost on the worksheet. For the older children, have them run the balance as they go, calculating actual dollars and cents and adding in the local tax rate (if any) on groceries at the end. For the younger children, rounding will be more helpful. For both groups, it's helpful to also use the play money to "pay the grocery store." This will allow the children to check their work on the datasheet, comparing the money spent and the subtraction.

Remember, this is a feast for 12! Help your students understand servings and quantities.


Happy Thanksgiving!
Update: We completed this activity in 2 hours. The 6.5 year old did all of the writing and math and our 4.5 and 3 year olds chose the food from the circulars.

Tips: Our 6.5 year old had some difficulty remembering the concept of the hundreds, tens and ones and applying them to whole dollars (for this activity, we rounded; for older children, I would definitely have them calculate cents and even tax rates). To help, we used the Math-U-See manipulatives to subtract as we calculated. Once she could visualize the numbers, it was easy for her. The girls did a great job finding the 'greatest bargain' from the circulars this week.

To check our work, we compared our totals to the money totals (we used monopoly money). We were actually $1 off and figured out that somewhere along the way $1 was confused (probably among the mess of circulars and manipulatives around the table).

From the balance sheet (the running substraction) our 6.5 year old calculated the money we spent: $200-balance=spent. We bought turkey, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, 2 shrimp ring appetizers, stuffing, sparkling lemonade, and pineapple salad ingredients for a grand total of $114.

What to do with the money left over? Maisie decided to buy 12 dinners for the homeless through the Denver Rescue mission ($1.92 per meal, total of $24 rounded up--which we will actually donate). The remaining $62 (she calculated as well) will be put in savings.

We also determined that it cost us $9.50 per person for our Thanksgiving meal. The Denver Rescue Mission provides a meal for $1.92. Maisie was amazed at how much better the Denver Rescue mission is at providing low cost food. :)

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Raising Financially Fit Kids

One of our goals as parents is to teach our children about money. Personally, I didn't "get" it until recently and I still feel like I have miles to go. My parents are very wise financially--they have amazing credit scores, pay off their debt, have savings, investments--and I really admire them.

However, they didn't really talk to us about money. They were rather overindulgent and wanted to give us what they didn't have growing up, but honestly it didn't help me when I became independent. I've had to learn about credit and saving the hard way so I'm attempting to help my children into a better transition to adulthood and independence.



I found a great book called "Raising Financially Fit Kids." I bought it one day out of the bargain bin when Maisie was only 2 years old for less than $5. I've always been the type to try and "look ahead" and buy things in the bargain bins with information I'll need to educate the girls; this is probably the best purchase I've made in such a way.

I first read it a couple years ago and I was pleasantly surprised at the information. I've always thought an allowance was about earning money around the house, but this book presents it in a completely different light. It outlines that an allowance is a way to teach about money, not pay your children for chores that are part of being a family.

I could go into detail, but that would take more time than I have right now :) I highly recommend the book; I love it! Not everyone will, but I think it makes perfect sense.

We started step 1 with Maisie today. Our schoolwork was learning about the value of money and where it comes from. I asked Maisie "Where do we get our money?" She said, "The bank!" I asked her how the money gets to the bank and she was at a loss. That's the mystery I think many kids miss--HOW does the money get there?

We talked at length about how I work at home and I don't get paid. It's very VALUABLE work, but no one is paying me factual money for it. Then we talked about what daddy does and how he earns the money from a company by working hard. We talked about how the money gets to the bank via daddy's paycheck so that we can use the money to spend (pay bills, buy food and clothes and some other fun things) and to save for emergencies. We also talked about charity and how we use some of our money to give food to the less fortunate or donate clothing.

Then we created our money jars. I didn't want to leave Dani out, so she made one as well to put her money in when Papa, Nana, or we give her pocket change. Maisie then made her 3 jars: Spend, Save and Give. We talked about how much to put in each and what we might do with them. I also drew (poorly) pictures of the money she is to put in each until she gets the hang of it.



Eventually, I want to take Maisie to the pottery place and make real pottery jars with her, but that will have to wait for a special mom/Maisie day in the future.

The book also outlines money personalities and how to help them develop. When I asked Maisie about dividing up her money into the jars, she wanted to put it all in the save jar. I'm curious to see if she really is a hoarder or if she doesn't realize she will have her own money to spend--then how will she react with money in her wallet to spend?

And as our Math lesson, we talked about the value of a penny, nickel, dime and quarter comparing them to how many pennies each are worth. We'll have to work on that one more--she was a little confused that a tiny dime is worth more than a big nickel :) But aren't most people? LOL

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