MiniPage activities meet many state and national educational standards. This week’s standards:

September 8, 2007 at 2:00a.m.

Students understand the effects of adding and subtracting whole numbers. Students understand situations that entail multiplication and division, such as equal groupings of objects and sharing equally. (Math: Numbers and Operations)

Activities:

1. Here’s a numbers race. Join a family member or friend for the game. You will need a section from the newspaper and colored markers for each player. Set a timer for two minutes, then open the newspaper section. Each player circles as many different numbers as he/she can find. Look for different kinds of numbers, like dates, page numbers, prices, etc. The player with the most kinds of circled numbers wins.

2. Plan a party using the grocery store ads. Pretend you have $30 to buy food for your party. Make a list of the items you would buy and how much they cost. Add up the prices to find your total. Try to get as close to $30 as you can.

3. Count the comic strips in your newspaper to find the total number of comics. Now calculate: What percentage of the comic strips have one frame? What percentage have three frames? What percentage have four frames? Your percentages should add up to 100 percent.

4. Check out the numbers on the weather page of your newspaper. Find the day’s high temperature for five cities in your state. How many of the cities will be hotter than your city? How many will be lower? Look at the temperatures in other countries. Which country will have the highest temperature? Which country the lowest?

5. Identify five different people in the newspaper. List their names on a piece of paper. Next, list their occupations next to their names. Now list three different ways each person might use math in his or her job. Finally, write a paragraph discussing the career you would like to have when you are an adult. Describe the different ways you might use math in that job.