Day 19: Open-Ended Questions for Mathsmas

I recently used a lot of open-ended questions when teaching measurement to year 7. My favourite question ideas were from "Open-ended Maths activities" by Sullivan and Lilburn and I reviewed a couple of those ideas in this post.

Some Mathsmas ideas:

• What gift could you fit in this box? This stocking?
• If this stocking contained 10 presents, what size might they be?
• Draw a (reindeer/santa/elf/present/stocking/wreath) with an (area/perimeter) of x units.
• Make a Christmas design that is three-quarters red and one quarter green (use grid or isometric paper or pattern blocks)
• My friend and I ate all of a Christmas cake which was cut into 8 equal pieces. What fraction of the cake might each of us have eaten?
• Advent number of the day - use today's date or 25 for Christmas and ask students to write as many questions as they can think of with that number as the answer
• Two presents have the same volume but different mass. What could they be?
• What methods could you use to try to determine what is in a present without opening it?
• I used 1 metre of ribbon to wrap a present in the shape of a rectangular prism. What might the dimensions of the present be?
• I have 1 square metre of wrapping paper. What size presents could I wrap with it?
• Draw a Christmas design that has four lines of symmetry.
• Draw a Christmas design that has rotational symmetry.

What else would you add to this list?