Playlist: Bookmarks
Two Animals Switch Biomes
What if a capybara and a kangaroo rat switched homes? Would their adaptations be helpful at all?
Words Within Words: RAINBOW
How many words can you find within rainbow?
Tournament of Not-So-Famous Inventors
Which inventor and invention will win the tournament?
What’s In My Brain: Tree vs Tree
Let’s look at deciduous vs coniferous trees.
New Uses For A Cardboard Tube
So, what can a cardboard tube be used for other than holding wrapping paper?
Mother’s Day Cards
Let’s write the cleverest Mother’s Day cards you’ve ever seen!
Frozen Bubble
What happens when you blow a bubble in below-freezing temperatures?
The Heaviest Pumpkin
How heavy is the world’s heaviest pumpkin when measured in Mr. Byrds?
A Halloween Costume Gone Wrong
Let’s go roller skating in a Halloween costume! What could possibly go wrong?
New Uses For A Pencil
So, what can a pencil be used for other than writing and drawing?
Pig Pen Cipher (Codes Part 2)
Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!
Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
Words Within Words: Intro (SOLDIER)
How many words can you find within SOLDIER? 20? 35? 50? Even more!?
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.
Categorize and Re-Categorize Animals
Put these animals into groups. Then do it again. Then… do it one more time. How does re-re-grouping the same creatures reveal new patterns and give new insights?
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
Racetrack – Race Around A Graph
How fast do you get your mathematical car going without crashing?
Tournament: 8 Wonders of the Solar System
Which location is the most wondrous place in the solar system?
Tournament of Ancient Inventions
Which of these inventions of the ancient world is most influential? Least useful today? Most taken-for-granted?
Animal Adaptation Tournament
Which animal has the most interesting, most valuable, or strangest adaptations?
How Many Ways: Fraction Subtraction 234
How many different ways can you make this fraction subtraction statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Fraction Addition 234
How many different ways can you make this fraction addition statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Writing in Pilish
Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Create A Civilization: Currency
What type of currency will your civilization use? What symbols will be on it? Why are they significant?
Looping Grid Art
Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you’ll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!
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.
What’s In My Brain: Owl vs Eagle
Some of these animals are nocturnal and some are diurnal.
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!
The Pros and Cons of Producers and Consumers
Sure, students might know the difference between a producer and a consumer… but have they considered how they feel about each other? What, in a producer’s opinion, are the pros and cons of a consumer?
Addition: 3 Digits Plus 2 Digits (Multiple Solutions)
Typical practice problems don’t move students up Bloom’s Taxonomy. With this framework, you’ll see kids stop and really think about how to approach multi-digit addition.
Game: Snakes
In this grid-based strategy game, who will be the last to add to the snake?
Math Game: Heaps
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) subtraction game!
Characters Dressed as Other Characters for Halloween
What if one character dressed up as another for Halloween? Would the Cat in the Hat pick Captain Jack Sparrow, because they’re both chaotic yet good-natured people? Would Elsa dress up as The Ice King since they are both lonely?
Writing Seuss Style Poetry
Sure, Dr. Seuss wrote for young students, but can older students analyze his writing and learn to mimic his style? THEN, they can produce Seuss-style poetry about any topic: Ancient China, the electromagnetic spectrum, Pride and Prejudice, and (yes) fraction division!
Parentheses: How big of a change can they make!?
Two tiny parentheses. One expression. How big of a change can they make? Bigger than you think.
Not Like The Others: Planets
Which of these planets is not like others? Well, it sure looks simple at first. But each option could be the one that doesn’t fit in.
The Tournament of Biomes
Want to move beyond memorizing the characteristics of biomes? In this lesson, students work through a Tournament of Biomes, explaining which biome wins in each round (based on criteria you choose). In the end, they crown a 👑 Champion Biome!
Bulls and Cows
How quickly can you break the numeric code?
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!
The Angles of a Triangle
Why tell a kid the rules of a triangle when they can discover them!?
Deducing the Area of Triangles
Using patterns, students try to deduce where that area formula came from.
Building Creative Analogies
We’ll take two seemingly unrelated pieces of content (say volcanoes and the human body) and then build analogies to connect the two ideas. In the end, students can create a skit, comic, or story relating the two concepts.
Fractals: Koch Snowflake
You could keep zooming in on this snowflake forever!
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.
What Do Mean and Median Mean?
When will mean and median give us different results?
Depth and Complexity: ⚖️ Ethics
Want to add drama to any topic? Use the Ethics prompt!
Create A Civilization Introduction
Your students build a civilization from scratch — rivers, flags, calendars, currency, government. Social studies, science, and writing woven into one year-long project.
Discovering Pi With Sticky Notes
Pi is mysterious and strange! Why not let students discover it on their own?
Exploring Circumference With Famous Circles
Let’s find how the diameter and circumference of famous circles are related.
Historic Social Media
How would people from history have interacted online? Students will develop a conversation online between people involved in the same event from history.
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
Create A Creature
Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.
Math Curiosity: Palindromic Number Conjecture
Using this one weird trick, it seems that you can turn any number into a palindrome!
An App For A Historical Figure
What kind of an app could have helped Abe Lincoln accomplish his goals?
The Game of 100
Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?
Math Project: What If I Bought Apple Stock Instead?
What if you had an original iPod and sold it compared to if you had bought the equivalent amount of Apple stock and sold that?