Holiday Shopping Math Activities
The Christmas holiday season has many opportunities for connecting math to the real world. Shopping is a great way to incorporate discussions about budgeting, sales and the cost of items with your middle school math students.
This blog post will give you an inside peek into my Math Behind Holiday Shopping resource that includes seven different math activities. These engaging activities are great to use throughout December as math stations, a mini project, math packet and more.
Engaging real world math to use all season long!
What other teachers are saying:
Before taking a look into this resource, check out what a few teachers said about their experience with these activities:
“My students were shocked to realize the price of items and what it really costs to provide the gifts that they ask for each year. It was a well put together activity.”
“Used this with my students on the last day before break. It was engaging enough to pull their attention from the upcoming break :) The resource requires them to think about items that they really do want but adds calculations and great real world math...”
“This activity made learning before the holidays bearable. The students were engaged and excited to learn.”
How to Use This Resource
There are many ways to use this set of activities, here are some specific ways.
Use one or two activities per week in December.
Use the activities with a shortened class period or on the last day before break.
Have students work on these activities in small groups or with partners.
Set up math stations, using each activity at a station.
Use as a packet during the month of December.
Use as a mini project.
Activities Inside this Resource
#1: Is the Price Right? Matching Activity
Students will use the provided cards to match popular wish listed items to the correct sale price. This activity works well in small groups or as a math station. Students will be surprised to see what the true prices are!
Holiday Shopping Price Match Activity; Perfect for Math Stations
#2: What’s the Discount?
Students will look up the sale prices on five different items. They will then have to calculate the percent discount or original price on these items. Reflection questions are included with this activity. This activity includes an ad paper with popular Christmas wish items but students could also use online ads for the current season.
#3 The Math Behind Holiday Shopping
Your students will learn holiday shopping statistics each time they solve a math problem. Facts include how much people may spend on gifts, the amount spent on food and decorations and when and where people do their shopping. This is a fun and engaging way for students to practice skills that include writing and solving equations, simplifying expressions and calculating percentages.
#4: Best Deals Scavenger Hunt
This activity will have students looking through shopping ads either as paper copies (these usually can be found right when you enter a store) or online using store websites. Students will look at two different retailer’s prices on a specific product and determine who has the better price. Questions are also included for students to reflect on this activity.
#5: Holiday Shopping Problems
Word problems are always something students can use extra practice with. With this activity students will solve a variety of real world word problems all related to holiday shopping.
#6 Holiday Shopping Finding the Sale Price & Finding the Percent Discount
With these activities students will calculate the sale price or the percent discount with a variety of items with given price information.
#7 Holiday Shopping With a Budget
Students will create and follow a budget to plan gifts for those closes to them. This makes for an easy and fun mini project.
All of the above engaging activities will connect math to the real world while practicing imporant middle school math skills and are sure to make the busiest time of the year easier for you.
Grab this Holiday Shopping Math Activities resource here.
Looking for more ways to incorporate real world math, specifically through projects, check out this post here.
