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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Dinosaur Dig

Materials Needed:
DINOSAUR FACT PAGE
Dinosaur Egg Recipe (below)
Mallet or Hammer, dry paint brush
Dinosaur Identification (Dinosaur Encyclopedia or internet resource)

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Our current science unit is Dinosaurs (chosen by Maisie). I love that we have the option of doing so many hands on activities and this was one I was really looking forward to.

First we had to make our dinosaur eggs. I found some little plastic dinosaur figures on sale at Target in the summer (2.48 for 12 dinosaurs) and used the following recipe to create an "egg" outer shell:

Dinosaur Eggs

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup flour
1 cup used coffee grinds
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup sand
1 cup water

small plastic dinosaurs

What you do:

1. Mix all dry ingredients together. Slowly add water and knead until the mixture is is moist--like bread dough. (In the recipe I used, it said to try and use less than a cup, but I had a hard time getting the mixture to moisten enough).

2.Form the dough around the plastic dinosaur to look like an egg.

Let dry for 4-5 days, or put in a 100-150 degree oven for a few hours.

Our eggs never dried all the way inside, but it worked out perfectly for us as the outside of the egg was hard to crack (we had to use a heavy mallet), but the girls could get the dinosaurs out of the center because it was mushy.

I hid the eggs in the backyard in various areas, including the rocks. Each girl was responsible for finding two eggs, then cracking them open to reveal their dinosaurs. It was pretty cold, so the girls worked rather fast!

Once the dinosaurs were extracted, we went inside to determine which dinosaurs we found. With our big Dinosaur book and the internet, we named our dinosaurs. Maisie--our 6.5 year old--completed a dinosaur report page. Feel free to use it if you'd like, the file is linked above. Our plan is to create on of these reports for every dinosaur studied and put them in a binder. For further study, one can have the child rearrange the reports by different topics such as Food source (Herbivore/Carnivore), Geographic Location, or Time Period.

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Money Math Game

Supplies: One Die for each ChildApprox. 30 pennies, 15 nickels, 15 dimes, 12 quarters, 1 dollar bill

Ages: 2-7
Ages 2-3 Counting
Ages 4-5 Counting and basic money exchange
Ages 6-7 Money exchange, counting by 5's, 10's
Older Child Varation: Use two dice, have the child add, subtract or mulitply the two numbers. You may have to change the upper number to two-five dollars, instead of one dollar.

Time: Approximately 20-30 minutes, depending on ages.

Play:Taking turns, each child rolls the die once. The banker (usually the parent or an older child) gives the child pennies equal to the value on the die.For a 2-5 year old, the challenge is to count the number on the die and then accept the correct number of pennies. The pennies will start to pile up. At the end of each turn, ask the (older) child to prepare and amount to exchange to the bank (or help the younger child count up enough for a nickel or a dime). Have the children exchange for nickels and dimes first. The 2-5 year olds may not understand the exact exchange, but will understand how to count the number of pennies. The 6-7 year olds will easily exchange for the nickels and dimes but will have a tougher time counting by 5's and 10's.Once the child has enough for quarters, challenge him/her to exchange nickels and dimes for a quarter.The first one to 4 quarters can exchange for the single dollar bill and is the winner!In our house, we let the winner put the dollar bill in his/her piggy bank.

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