Day 13: Christmas Enlargements

A couple of years in a row I had the lowest year 8 class, trying to do rates and ratios at the end of term 4. Not the easiest task. One thing I latched onto was enlargements using a grid.

Originally I was just taking images from the internet of popular animals and cartoon characters, but obviously to share here I'll stick to my own work. No new illustrations I'm afraid, but I've reused my reindeer and a penguin from the ratio pictures.

Grid Enlargement Reindeer Grid Enlargement Penguin

Here is the proforma to make some more (not that it's hard to make, but save yourself some time). All you need to do is insert the image.

Grid Enlargement Proforma

Day 12: Calculator Word Stories

These are from an Australian company called 10 Ticks that I signed up for a while ago. They have a whole bunch of worksheets with some very cool, different ideas, and they also have a whole pack of Christmas maths worksheets.

You have to sign up, and for a while they seemed to send a lot of emails, but I haven't noticed that recently.

These word stories are pretty cool. The idea is you answer the questions on the calculator and it makes a word which you then fill in to the story.

You could get a class to do this (Christmas or not) as an activity to write their own stories. On second thoughts, maybe they shouldn't write their own stories. They would all be about boobs.

Other sheets from the Christmas pack include permutating baubles (exploration of permutations using colours), Christmas symmetry, and some general puzzle-type things.

They also have a colour-by-solutions Christmas pack. This is an idea I've explored myself, a colour-by where the work is a little bit harder and the answers aren't necessarily numbers. Mine was a colour-by-like-terms. I'll have to find that. And make it Christmassy. I think it was a dinosaur.

Anyway these ones include simplifying fractions, colouring by rounding, by number properties and by substituting into an algebraic expression. Pretty cool.

Day 4: Christmas Colour-by-numbers

These worksheets are only very simply addition and subtraction but great fun and really cute pictures to have to put up around the room as the end of the year approaches.

This is the display from 2010. I remember being surprised at how much my students of all ages loved these! Also featured Christmas sudoku (which I'll mention later) and a turkey (which I won't).

Day 1: Ratio Pictures

Let's start with something I actually created myself. Ratios can be a tricky subject for some but concrete or visual things help and make it more fun. For the end of the year, sometimes you need everyone to chill out, relax, and do a small amount of maths mixed in with a large amount of colouring.

I've put the images in pretty massive so they can be downloaded and printed clearly.

 
Penguins! Drawn by me. Their hats need to be coloured in the ratio described on the sign. The rest of the colouring is free-style.

This one was made using a free gingerbread man font. 

A four-part ratio, but if you just colour in as you go along the chain it'll still be pretty easy. Drawn by me.

Ratios of candy canes, baubles, present tags and present colours! Drawn by me. The font I used for the text is called Santa's Sleigh, it's one of my Christmas favourites.