parade | pəˈrād | noun

a public procession, especially one celebrating a special day or event and including marching bands and floats.

Who doesn’t love a good parade?  People throwing out candy from elaborately decorated floats, listening to marching bands while baton twirlers dance by, watching the line of fancy cars drive by with kings and queens waiving…the list goes on!

Have you ever participated in a parade?  What is something you remember?  When I was in 4th grade, I dressed up as one of the orphans from Annie and walked in my hometown parade.  My little sister was Annie and my older sister was Miss Hannigan.

One of my favorite holiday traditions is watching the Rose Bowl Parade on New Year’s Day.  There have been over 135 Rose Bowl parades in Pasadena, California.

Spark your math thinking!

1. Set up your math mini spark recording page: #67 Rose Bowl Parade
2. Read about the Parade here: https://tournamentofroses.com/about/ and look for “number facts” about the parade.  For example:  45.5 Million people watch the parade on television and 700,000 (estimated) watch it live. Source
3. Create a Infographic about some of the data you found out about the parade.  Check out Violet’s example.
4. Watch this video about the design and Manufacturing process for floats.  Record what you learned and an idea for a float.
5. Ask your EY teacher for the Rose Bowl Parade math page from the Mini Spark folder. You will calculate the number of flowers used to create the floats.
6. Work on this math activity at Bedtime Math.  The answers to the math problems are at the bottom of the page, so don’t scroll all of the way down until you are ready to check your work.
7. Share your math mini spark recording page with your teacher/EY coordinator.

image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/karmakazesal/4146346672