Design a Cube City...a Study in Volume!

Some of my fifth grade friends have been hard at work, designing cube cities as a culminating activity to their study on volume. In some cases, they worked together to create entire towns! Take a peek...

Nice perspective!

A true metropolis!

Great use of color!

Love seeing Lady Liberty in the background!

3-D trees and bushes!

It's always more fun when you work together!

Want to read more about the process behind this lesson? Learn more here. Or,  purchase the complete lesson here.

Measuring & Graphing with an Amaryllis

Our family received an Amaryllis kit from Grandma for Christmas. Today, the kids and I planted the bulb and got ready for a little measuring & graphing activity. Want to join us? Here's how:

1. Purchase an Amaryllis kit from a local store. In winter, they are widely available.

2. Plant the bulb according to package directions. (If yours, like ours, arrives with a hard disk of "plant medium," you might want to have a discussion about how much the peat changes by volume after water is added.)

3. Place an anchor in the soil to support your rulers. We used chopsticks.

4. Tape the ruler to the anchor so that it aligns with the top of the bulb's neck.

5. Measure. Our bulb already had green growth, albeit at a weird angle. We just measured straight across at the top so as not to break the plant. I told the boys that we'd measure our plant the same way I measure them...at the tippy top! My 12yo is measuring in centimeters and had to scale a blank graph to go with his estimate for ultimate growth. My 8yo is measuring in inches, to the nearest half inch.

Here are a variety of options for graphing amaryllis growth.

***This activity was created to say THANK YOU for your support this past year. I appreciate you!

Math in Real Life: Brownies for a CROWD!

I love exploring "real life" math with students. Today I'm excited to be linking up with:

 A monthly REAL WORLD math blog link-up hosted by

 4mulaFun, The Teacher Studio, Teaching to Inspire in 5th, AND MissMathDork,

A month ago, my family attended an annual camp retreat. When I walked in the kitchen and saw this...

...I knew it was time for real life math. My sister, the baker, was in the process of preparing brownies for 150. Here's her recipe:

Thankfully, a computer program converts a standard brownie recipe to serve 150. But the question remains...how do you convert fractional parts of quarts, gallons, tablespoons, etc.? And what does that equal in portions that bakers are likely to find friendly? For example:

• How many cups of cocoa power, sugar, and flour are needed?
• How many sticks of butter?

In the kitchen, this chart is posted on a nearby cabinet. 

Using that chart, she made some delicious brownies! Can you figure out exactly how much of each ingredient she used?

What other "real life" math moments do you see in this activity?

Picturing 5,000!

Nana ordered new meal worms to feed the wild bluebirds. Someone was captivated with the total.

"One, two, three, four,..."

Math Monday Blog Hop: Real Life Math

Think about the last 24 hours. When have you used math?

• driving?
• grocery store?
• checkbook balancing?
• weighing fruits or vegetables?
• cooking?
• sewing?
• construction?
• cleaning?

 Now...how do you take those real life experiences and integrate them into math lessons? Post ideas below (no ads, please.)






If you want to share this collection on your blog, just grab this link:

get the InLinkz code

John Boy Walton, Where is MY Room?

If the mere sight of this:

...makes you start to long for calls of "Goodnight John Boy"...I get it.

Yep. I grew up under the illusion that I was half Walton. To this day, I'm pretty sure that MaryEllen is a long-lost sister and that Grandpa's land deed will eventually prove that I'm to inherit a piece of the mountain.

If you need more proof, just look at my childhood lunchbox. It holds a place of honor on my living room shelf.

Last week I visited Virginia for the first time. Along with a trip to Monticello, I couldn't help but visit the next most famous historical site. What else? Walton's Mountain...in non-t.v. land, that would be Schuyler, VA.

So here's my conundrum. I got to see the original "Waltons" (Hamner) house. Based on the television series, I assume that all the kids (7 on t.v., but 8 in real life), parents, and grandparents slept there. Real life = twelve people. Yet here's the real house:

Too cheap and in a hurry to tour the place, I'll take the word of fellow tourists that the place only had 3 bedrooms. So where did all twelve people sleep? As a half sister, I'd love to know!

So that's my math problem for the week:

3 bedrooms
divided by
2 grandparents
2 parents
8 kids

Do the math.
I don't think there's room for any half sisters.
Sigh.

P.S. A reader sent me a message that might explain more:
"My mother grew up in Tennessee/Georgia in the 1940s. They slept 3 to 4 kids per bed; living rooms had beds in them. There wasn't much leisure time, so you didn't need a "living room" or a sofa. She said you were either working at chores or sleeping!"

Staying Alive...with Real Life Math Stories

I like to "collect" math stories. From real life. Over the years I've amassed some good ones (including the one about the clerk who needed a calculator to compute 20-12!) but this last week one struck me...or perhaps "stuck" me.

I've started allergy shots again...something I've done repeatedly over my lifetime. I've never experienced anything more than a little localized reaction and since I've been on shots since May, I didn't really expect much at a recent injection.

But you need some numbers:
With each new bottle of serum, I start with a tiny amount, .1ml, and then move up to .2, then .3...each time going up by .1 until I reach .5 and then begin a new bottle with a stronger concentration. Last week, I received my second injection from the newest bottle, or .2ml. Tiny amount, right? Much less than those biggies at .4 or .5. Insignificant, really.

Hardly. Within 45 minutes of my shot I was in full allergy attack: sneezing, coughing, itchy throat, runny nose, and the scariest...wheezing, with air passages closing. To make a scary story short, I followed protocol and recovered.

But here's the math part...

I saw the allergy nurse this week and reflected on how odd the experience was. It was such a tiny amount: only .2ml. Ah, she said...that's what she used to think, too. Until someone pointed out that something significant happens during the .2ml shot. Can you figure it out? Again, I always get injections in this order:

.1ml
.2ml
.3ml
.4ml
.5ml

What's significant about the  .2 injection? Mathematical minds want to know... Leave your comments below.

P.S. This is a reminder to collect "real life" stories like this to share with kids. Make it real! (But perhaps not THIS real!) :)

P.P.S. School starts up for me this week. Big Math Monday Blog Hop announcement on Monday!

Google Eyes Problem Solving

Picked up this package of Google Eyes at the dollar store. Do you see the math problem-solving potential?

Look at the big arrow. I bought this package of eyes intending to use them for people eyes in an art project. If I'm using them for people, what problem will I encounter if the package holds 125 eyes? How many people can I make?

Look at the small arrow. It shows that the package contains:

15 pc (2.4cm), 50 pc (1.2cm), 60pc (1cm)

If I use same-sized eyes for each person, how many people can I make with each size? Will I have any leftovers to create a "one-eyed monster?" If so, which size eye will my monster have?

This morning over the breakfast table, this package led to a discussion about odd and even numbers. I love looking for math problems in the environment!