Middle School Math Activities for Halloween

No matter what age, students love Halloween. Intigrating the holiday into a classroom lesson is easy and gives children break from a traditional lesson plan. Middle school Halloween math activities to help deepen their understanding of graphing, fractions, and even use Pascal's Triangle. Activities can involve all aspects of Halloween including pumpkins, haunted houses and candy.

Middle school students are learning about coordinates on a graph. Supply each student with graph paper. Have the students create a y axis down the center of the sheet of paper. Have the x axis be roughly 1/3 up from the bottom of the page. Give students coordinates for a number of points on the graph paper. The outline of the graph will look like a house. The details, such as windows and doors, can be odd shapes at sharp angles. Once complete, let the students decorate their haunted houses.

Provide students with the large bags of candy that contains the nutritional values. Have the children create a chart with the name of the candy, the calories per serving and the weight of the average candy bar in grams. Students can then make bar graphs and Venn diagrams showing each candy bar's weight and calories. Have them determine which candy bar has the most calories per gram. You may choose to distribute candy to the class. Be aware of allergies and school policies before handing out candy bars to students.

Create a paper cauldron and hang it from the blackboard. Place cards for different ingredients, such as spider legs, eyeballs and wings of flies. These ingredients should be fractions like 1/2 cup or 1/3 quart. Tell the student that the recipe makes enough for one goblin but there are many goblins coming to the party. Provide the students with how many goblins are coming to the party. The students then will be required to multiply the fractions depending on how many goblins are coming to the party. After the students are done with their brew, give them some witches brew that you made, such as hot chocolate or apple cider.

Pascal's Triangle offers students a great way of learning patterns and concepts in math. Provide students with a worksheet with pumpkins arranged in a triangle. The worksheet should already have some of the line filled in to give the students a chance to recognize the pattern to fill in the rest of the pumpkin. This is completed by adding the two pumpkins directly above it. Have students look for other patterns. For example, have them add the totals of the horizontal lines. Discuss symmetry and show how the triangle is symmetrical.