I know I’ve blogged about this before, but seriously, you can really turn anything into a math problem!

I recently read a blog post by @raspberryberet3 about teaching financial literacy in the classroom and I couldn’t agree more!  Even better, let’s get into the habit as parents of  pointing out situations when we use math in our daily lives.  I realize I’m a math teacher and sometimes my problems are a S-T-R-E-T-C-H for practical applications, but it does get us talking about math in different ways.  Below are a few ways I talk about math with the #spadyboys.

• I always point out geometry vocabulary while driving.  It’s not uncommon for me to pull off on the side of the road to take a picture of an object with lots of geometric terms.  This one is one of my favorites!  Can you see the quadrilaterals, triangles, transversals and supplementary angles?

I have a collection of pictures here: http://tinyurl.com/geopicswg and recently I had my pre-algebra students use these pictures and @explainevrythng on their iPad to define and highlight the “Geometry Around Us.”  It was much better than writing down a bunch of definitions in a notebook.  Check out Tyler’s example here:  https://youtu.be/aDcRaVMiTa8

I’m excited about some of the new vocabulary ideas I learned from @rwootenits at NETA this past week!  There are lots of tools and resources we can use to make the vocabulary much more meaningful for our students.

• My favorite place to take the #spadyboys is the @DollarTree.  Before we get to the checkout, they have to calculate the sales tax.  Food isn’t taxed so they have to figure out how many non-food items we have.  Then, if it’s 7% sales tax, that’s $0.07 for every dollar we spend.  They often have the total calculated before the checker scans all the items.
• Percents show up everywhere!  When I read @raspberryberet3‘s blog post, I immediately thought of my awesome shoe deal at @DSWShoeLovers last month.  The shoes shown at the top of this page were originally $60.00 marked down to $39.94 on the yellow sticker.  The yellow sticker meant that I could take an additional 80% off!  What was the final price for the shoes?  Figure it out and leave a comment below!  Whenever I can, I stress that we don’t always need calculators or tip cards to figure out percents.  With a little rounding and estimating and moving decimal places, we can do it all mentally!
• I have a fascination with palindromes and get super excited when my odometer (currently at 159710 miles) reads a palindrome.  Not only does it make for a cool pattern of numbers, but we can also figure out when the next palindrome will take place.  BTW…how many more miles do I have to drive in order to reach a palindrome?  Palindromes pop up all the time on the clock!  Even my 5-year-old is getting the hang of it!

You truly can turn anything into a math problem.  Whether it’s a practical application of percents or a fun pattern of numbers that create a palindrome, let’s work on turning the #mathcurse into #mathopportunities!