Holiday Math Activities for Kids
- Math is sometimes seen as dull by students. Festive activities can make make come alive!calculator image by Randy McKown from Fotolia.com
Holidays are an opportunity to bring attention to subjects that may not otherwise be intensely explored, such as math---a subject that many kids may find dull and daunting. For these children, it can be useful to explore math's relationship with things that they find more interesting and exciting. Festive math games and activities can be very efficient ways to do this. - Pi Day is the mathematical holiday celebrating the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter---3.14---otherwise know as "pi." The day is celebrated on March 14 because of how that date is written: 3/14. Eating pie is the usual way to enjoy Pi Day, but people also partake in more educational, math-centered, activities.
Children can do something as simple as ordering a pizza from a local pizzeria and using their math skills to determine which size is the better deal.
A more complex version of the above activity can be conducted with pies. With enough pies (all of the same size) for all kids in the group, they can work together to calculate both the surface area and the volume of each slice when every one in the group gets an equal size slice. - Earth Day is a holiday that was created to celebrate and recognize the Earth's environment. Children can do research to find out exactly how many trees it takes to make common goods, such as books and grocery bags. Then, using the numbers they've gathered, the kids can use mathematical techniques to determine how much of an impact their own recycling makes. They can find out how many trees they save per year or how much more recycling they would need to do to save a certain number of trees.
- For children, Valentine's Day is usually celebrated with lots of candy and lots of hearts. For geometry activities, children can learn about the area and perimeter of a heart. For activities that mix science and math, kids can learn about the human heart: the amount of times a heart beats in a day and how much blood it pumps. Kids can then answer more specific questions, such as how many liters of blood are pumped through the heart in an hour.
