Playlist: Bookmarks
Two Animals Switch Biomes
What if a capybara and a kangaroo rat switched homes? Would their adaptations be helpful at all?
Comparing Characters’ Bedrooms
What item’s in a character’s bedroom would reflect their deepest desires? And what if they toured a similar character’s room?
What’s In My Brain: Pentagon vs Pentagon
We’re looking at regular vs irregular polygons.
Holiday Emoji Story ⛷️
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Mother’s Day Cards
Let’s write the cleverest Mother’s Day cards you’ve ever seen!
Factors and Codes (Episode 1)
Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.
Grouping Shapes by Parallel and Perpendicular Sides
Which shapes go together based on parallel and perpendicular lines?
Letters With Symmetry
Let’s group letters by their symmetry, then create symmetrical words, and then symmetrical sentences!
Crossing Every Bridge Exactly Once (aka Eulerian Paths)
How can you cross each bridge in this city exactly once?
Math Curiosity: Magic Triangles
Can you make each side of this triangle add up to 9 using the digits 1-6?
Squiggles Introduction
What do you see in this squiggle?
How Many Will There Be? Chip Off The Block
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
How Many Will There Be? Courtyard
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
How Many Will There Be? Squares in Squares
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
Thanksgiving Photo Writing
Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.
Plant Adaptation Tournament
Who will win in a tournament of eight plants with Interesting adaptations!?
Building Creative Confidence with the Torrance Tests
For TeachersHere are a bunch of ways to quickly practice creativity with your students for zero dollars.
Writing About Art: Chōshi in Shimosha
Get your students writing some pretty darn impressive poetry based on Japan’s most famous artist.
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
How Many Will There Be? Sliced Circles
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
How Many Will There Be? Xs and Os
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
How Many Will There Be? Desks
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
Paradox: Rebuilding A Ship
What if we completely rebuild something slowly? What if we completely rebuild it all at once? Is it still the same thing?
Word Ladder: Fast to Race (4 step)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Inferring With Art: Two Women
What are these two women up to? What’s that thing she’s holding? Let’s make some inferences!
Game: Number Scrabble
What if we played Tic-Tac-Toe with numbers and instead of three-in-a-row, we add up to 15? Well… then we’d have Number Scrabble!
Self Portraits: Text Art
What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?
Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
Game: Snakes
In this grid-based strategy game, who will be the last to add to the snake?
How Many Will There Be? Triangles Within Triangles
A triangle splits and splits and splits again. How many will there be in step 20?
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
Game: Gomoku
Want to take Tic-Tac-Toe to the next level!? Imagine a 15×15 board. You must get five-in-a-row. You cannot get six-in-a-row. That’s Gomoku!
Writing A Thanksgiving Letter
What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?
Disneyland Parking Structure Math Project
Your students will use estimation strategies to figure out how many parking spots are there in the parking structure at Disneyland? And you bet I reveal the real answer!
What’s In My Brain: Trapezoids or Not?
Which are trapezoids and which are not?
How Many Ways: Fraction Equivalence
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Times Equals Minus
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: 2 Digit ÷ 1 Digit = 1 Digit
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Ghost
Ghost is a word-building game for two players. The first person to create an actual word loses.
Same Perimeter, Different Area For Rectangles
Can two rectangles have the same perimeter but… different areas!?
Student Introductions with Complexity and Frames
How have you changed over time? Students introduce themselves through the lens of change — and learn a Depth and Complexity tool in the process.
Student Introductions With Depth and Frames
Want to introduce the tools of Depth and Complexity and learn more about your students and introduce the Frame graphic organizer? Have I got the activity for you!
Rounding Numbers (But Not To 10)
What could we possibly do to make rounding more interesting for students who already get it? In this series, students consider how they might round to values other than “the nearest 10.” How, for example, do we round to the nearest 9? 7? 15?
Paradox: The Liar’s Paradox
Nothing like a paradox to get your kids brains exploding 🤯! This one starts with five simple words: “This statement is a lie.”
Math Curiosity: Magic Squares
Imagine a 3×3 square in which every row, column, and diagonal have the same sum. That’s a magic square!
Why Is Our Calendar So Weird!?
Why are there 12 months? Why don’t weeks fit into months evenly? Why don’t weeks fit into the year evenly? What’s going on with the calendar!
Place Value (Beyond Base 10)
Place value is something we cover in elementary school. It seems simple, but I’d wager that very few adults really understand the topic. I sure didn’t until I worked with non-base-10 number systems in college. Your students can get a taste of this mind-boggling experience by imagining what it would be like if we didn’t have the number 9. What would each digit represent then?
The Resiliency Tournament
Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.
The Angles of a Triangle
Why tell a kid the rules of a triangle when they can discover them!?
Grouping Quadrilaterals In A Hierarchy
Can we classify quadrilaterals like we classify living things?
Deducing the Area of Triangles
Using patterns, students try to deduce where that area formula came from.
Doubling Dollars
Say you have a dollar. Say you can double that dollar each day: $1, $2, $4, and so on. How long will it take to reach… one million dollars? Not as long as you might think!
A Donut Investigation
In this cross-curricular investigation, students will look into an intriguing question: do donuts or salads have more sugar? They’ll grapple with misleading information, bias, and use their math skills to create a visual representation of sugar in popular foods.
Showing A Character’s Trait
We tell students to ‘show, not tell’ — but that advice is useless until they experience the difference. This lesson makes it click.
Content Imperatives: Parallel
Get students thinking broadly by exploring similarities across multiple topics. Combine with Depth and Complexity for bonus points!
Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator
Your students will create a new flower, designed to attract a specific pollinator.
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
Creating A Classroom Motto
Starting with specific examples of fantastic classroom behavior, your class will end up with one sentence summing up their expectations. It’s a classroom motto!
Furnishing A Hotel
Design and furnish hotel rooms on a budget. Real math, real constraints, real decisions. Then pitch your hotel to investors.