Some of the best Thanksgiving math activities have to do with cooking. Creating a Thanksgiving meal involves important math skills such as grouping, measuring,patterns and arithmetic. Not only do these math activities help your child to brush up on their math skills, but they also make them feel important as they help prepare the Thanksgiving meal. Use the tips below to help your child practice their math skills.
- Have students help you decide how big of a Turkey you should buy based on how many people are attending dinner. Assume each person will need 1 lb. of turkey.
- As you are baking and cooking the meal, ask your child to be the one to do all the measuring so that they can learn to use measuring cups and deal with fractions. Make it challenging by asking your child to measure 1/2 cup of flour in two equal parts. Repeat this process several times with several types of measurements.
Have students make ring napkin holders to set at the Thanksgiving dinner. These can be made out of construction paper and glue. Simply cut strips of construction paper so that they are all the same size (about 5 inches), then glue the ends together so that they form a circle around a napkin. Ask children to make 3 different styles and set them around the table in a pattern. This helps them to practice their pattern skills as well as their measuring skills.
Practice grouping or pattern skills by helping your child to make Thanksgiving place-mats. You will need clear contact paper, a measuring tape and scissors. Help your child to go out into the yard to collect leaves.Measure and cut the contact paper so that you have two pieces for every seat at the table and all the pieces are the same size. To practice grouping, have the children take the paper off of the back of the sheets of contact paper and arrange leaves of similar patterns on the contact paper. Then, take the paper off the back of another sheet of contact paper and lay it on top of the first one so that both sticky sides are facing each other.
To practice making patterns, use the same method described above, but ask students to use different types of leaves to make a pattern on the contact paper. This can be in the form of arranging leaves in a specific design or not, but the leaves should alternate in a pattern.
Have fun with your Thanksgiving math activities and encourage your child to be creative as they learn. Let your children exercise their math skills by asking you to do some math activities, then double checking your work. Don't forget to make a mistake now and then to see if they catch it!