Jim and Jesse started their road trip with the same amount of money. Your class must find the amount of money each one had given, the amount of money spent, and the ratio of money at the end. This is a comprehensive problem that...

Help your fourth graders make cents out of fractions and decimals with this short word problem. After learning that dimes are one-tenth and pennies one-hundredth of a dollar, students write a fraction and decimal for a given number...

What a great way to incorporate Judith Viorst's story, Alexander, Who Used to Be Rish Last Sunday, with a math lesson on money. Second graders listen to the story being read while the teacher stops to record each time Alexander spends...

A quick activity to test the knowledge of your learners on adding and subtracting with decimals. They must calculate how much Jayden spent at the store and how much money he has remaining.  

Here is a great problem-solving activity for young mathematicians. Intended solely for instructional purposes, the activity is appropriate for learners to add four numbers together. Not only must they add four numbers together,...

Adolescents love to shop, especially when an item is discounted. Here, shoppers only have a set amount of money to spend. Will they be able to make a purchase with the discount and tax added in? Percent discounts can be calculated...

The real value of education is highlighted in more than one way on a activity designed to not only add, subtract, multiply, and divide decimals to hundredths, but also to address the correlation between higher pay...

In order to solve for who raised the most money, learners will need to choose an appropriate math strategy or tool to help them. Two possible solutions, one involving pictures and one involving abstract thought, are presented in the...

Every book has a few great characters, but James and the Giant Peach is the only one whose characters travel in a piece of fruit. The class creates T-charts for the main characters of the novel, while reading the book. They write actions...

Teenagers love to think about driving and buying their first car. The intent of this resource is to create an equation for the list price of a car and add the appropriate state tax. Once your teens understand the calculation, ask them to...

Autumn's come early in your classroom! Match leaves with short words to the trees with the correct vowel sounds. A few blank leaves allow you to add your own words to the activity.

Create a scaled model of our solar system in your classroom! Scholars work collaboratively to build paper mache planets and hang them in their proper position to showcase each planet's location in the solar system.   

What one person thinks is a pest may not be a pest to someone else. Here, scholars examine the characteristics of living things and pests through grand conversation and a variety of activities. Class members play a game of pest or not a...

We use debt often to describe negative numbers and your learners will be able to see how it translates into math. They will be asked to go through a series of transactions and make simple equations for each one, following it with a...

A basic set-up leads to a surprisingly complex analysis in this variation on the question of surrounding a central circle with a ring of touching circles. Useful for putting trigonometric functions in a physical context, as well as...

The dreidel song, or "I Have a Little Dreidel," is a fun traditional song for the season of Hanukkah. Teach your class how to play the dreidel game with an activity that includes the lyrics to the classic song.

Collaborative discussions around this retail store problem will be taxing. Calculating discount and tax and the order of the operations are used to motivate an opportunity for learners to make a convincing argument using algebraic...

How can you safely model exponential growth and decay? A hands-on activity uses candies to model not only exponential decay, but also exponential growth. Exponential equations are fitted by hand and by use of a calculator...

Testing, testing! Following the provided script, class members are asked to create a radio commercial, complete with sound effects and background music.

Learners hear wedding bells in this problem set, as they help a fictional bride plan the centerpieces for her wedding reception. Algebra is married to geometry as volume, aesthetics, and budgeting all come into play. Learners are...

You want to be where everyone gets a raise. A short clip from the TV show Cheers provides the context for the task. After watching an interaction between a bartender and an owner regarding a raise, viewers write inequalities to represent...

Students explore a homemade etch-a-sketch. In this hands-on experience, students benefit from the directions on how to create a homemade etch-a-sketch. This lesson is intended more as a how-to for the teacher of a younger child.

Is "time money"? See if you can figure out exactly how much your time is worth. Explore the concepts of number patterns, time, and money in this one-page activity from the NCTM Math Challenge for Families series. Find out why mastering...

You are on a trip and need to cross a bridge, but you have to pay tolls in coins. Solve this puzzle by making your way to the island only using 100 coins.