Newspaper Search

Newspaper Search


Search through the newspaper for mathematical data.



What you'll need


Newspaper



What to do


1. Numbers in the news. Find the following things in the
paper:

a graph
a number less than 10
something that comes in 2s, 3s, 4s
a number more than 50 the days of the week
a number more than 100
a number that is more than 100 but less than 999
a symbol or word for inches, feet, or yards
a schedule of some kind
a triangle
a weather symbol
a percent sign
sports statistics



2. List it. Provide your child with the grocery section of
the newspaper in order to make up a list of food that will
feed the family for a week and meet a budget of a certain
amount of money. Have your child make a chart and use a
calculator to figure the cost of more than one item. If
the total for the groceries is too great, talk about which
items can be eliminated. Could the list be cut down by a
few items or by buying less of another item? What will
best serve the needs of the family?.

3. For a fraction of the cost. Give your child a few coupons
and grocery ads from the paper. Help your child match the
coupons to some of the grocery items in the ad. What
fraction of the cost is the coupon? For example, if an
item costs 79 cents and the coupon is for 10 cents off,
what fraction of the cost can be saved? (About 1/8.) What
percent are you saving on the item? (About 12 1/2
percent.)





One of the main ways people use numbers is for planning.
Knowing how to plan how much things will cost before going to
the store and how to read schedules and weather information
from the paper will help your child understand the world.


Treasure Hunt


Everyone's house has hidden treasures. There is a lot of
math you and your child can do with them.







What you'll need


Buttons
Screws
Washers
Bottle caps
Old keys
Sea shells
Rocks
or anything else you can count



What to do


1. Find a container to hold the treasures.

2. Sort and classify the treasures. For example, do you have
all the same sized screws or keys? How are they alike? How
are they different?

3. Use these treasures to tell addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division stories. For example, if we
share 17 buttons among three friends, how many will we
each get? Will there be some left over? Or, if we have 3
shirts that need 6 buttons each, do we have enough
buttons?

4. Organize the treasures by one characteristic and lay them
end-to-end. Compare and contrast the different amounts of
that type of treasure. For example, there are 3 short
screws, 7 long screws, and 11 medium screws. There are 4
more medium screws than long ones. This may also provide
an opportunity to talk about fractions: 7/21 or 1/3 of the
screws are long.







Finding a container to hold the treasures gives your child
practice in spatial problem solving. The treasures may help you
to explain the concepts of addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division because they can be moved around
and grouped together so your child can count the items.



Family Portrait


Have your child get to know members of your family by
collecting information and picturing it on a graph.



What you'll need


Paper
Pencil
Crayons


What to do


1. Choose an inherited family characteristic: hair colors,
for example.

2. Count how many people in the family have the different
hair colors.

3. Make a graph. For example, if 5 people have brown hair,
draw 5 heads side by side to show these five people. Do
the same for the other hair colors.









Graphs help everyone, including adults, understand
information at a glance. By looking at the lengths of the lines
of heads, your child can quickly see which hair color, for
example, is most common.