Handy Math

In this activity, students take customer orders at an ice cream stand & calculate their totals.  From there, they select the currency needed to receive exact payment. This icon-rich task is excellent for those who might otherwise struggle with word problems, such as beginning readers & language learners.  Have fun, & let us know how it goes!

In this activity, students get to choose how a park will be designed by selecting its contents & its layout!  They must stick to a $500 budget & calculate costs through multiplication & addition. Prices are predetermined, & students pick the quantity of each item to place in the park. Students must draw arrays that represent the cost of items chosen, & they must also finish scaffolded number sentences that correspond to the arrays.  On the Cost Sheet, students calculate the grand tot

In this activity, students help at an animal shelter by determining how to equally split donations among the kennels.  To do this, they must partition the donated goods into arrays & complete the corresponding number sentences. Once all items have been divvied up, students bring the vision to life by creating a kennel blueprint!

In this activity, kids pretend they’re taking orders at a snack shack & must calculate bills for the customers.  Rich in visuals, this activity is great for English language learners & students with limited reading skills--We all know how overwhelming standard word problems can be!  One more bonus is that place value is embedded!