It seems like everywhere you look these days, people are sharing ideas for side hustles. Even our kids are coming up with creative ways to generate income for themselves. With our kids being exposed to this concept regularly, it's time to capitalize on this interest, and tie it to math in this project based learning (PBL) experience!

The project begins with students winning 1,000,000, and choosing to spend it on an Airbnb Tiny Home to earn more money. Students research three cities currently listed as frequently visited by Airbnb, weigh the pros and cons of each city, and determine which open property they wish to buy.

After choosing a property, students are presented with four tiny home options. Students must weigh the pros and cons of each option, determine which tiny home still fits within their budget, and most importantly, confirms that the tiny home fits on their property using multiplication of mixed numbers.

Af the project continued, students practice skills such as rounding decimals, adding and subtracting through millions, multiplication, division, converting between units, and multiplying fractions and mixed numbers. Students design every aspect of their tiny home: from finding furniture that fits within their space to deciding on amenities that accommodate guests, students must think about every aspect of their business to ensure it is profitable.

After design is complete, students will learn about monthly expenses. Through decimal rounding and addition, students will learn about costs to run a tiny home, as well as how to determine monthly profit based on number of nights rented. Students will use their math skills to plot this data on a coordinate grid, and answer questions about their plotted data.

The wrap up to this project involves students thinking about profit over time. Will they see a return on their investment? The only way to find out, is to get your students started on this highly engaging project!