Spooktacular Colour by Numbers

Colour by number is a well known childhood activity and in most cases requires no maths other than number recognition. Take for example this Halloween Scarecrow picture, which I have completed online using the Color It by Numbers website here. As you can see each number represents a particular colour and once finished the image is more defined.

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To add difficulty to this activity and make suitable for older children we’ve created our MathArt worksheets. Here is an example solution sheet, taken from our Halloween Maths: Simplifying Expressions Math Art resource.

In this type of activity pupils must answer the questions and then shade all the squares with that answer with the colour indicated, resulting in a Halloween picture. There are two different Halloween MathArt resources available in our Halloween Bundle.

To add further challenge and set a homework task, I use a blank and much simpler template such as this pumpkin picture taken from Coloritbynumber.com here, and ask pupils to create their own question with the correct answers placed in the grid. Pupils will need to group the questions by colour.

You could ask pupils to create a set of questions limited by topic area for example; BIDMAS, solving equations, area, perimeter, evaluating formulae, alternatively pupils could create it based on a number of topics recently studied. Their work (when checked) could then be given an a starter of homework activity for another class. Here is an the example I show the pupils;

Other Halloween Activities we Love

halloween relayRelay Races

We love relay races as a great team and review activity, check out our blog post here about how to run a relay race. A collection of relay races for all occasions, not just Halloween, can be downloaded from here made by Chris Smith @AAP03102.

 

ghouls

Skeleton Rotational Symmetry

Check out our post on making some Halloween decorations using rotational symmetry here.

 

witches brewWitches Brew

Check out our blog here.

Thank you for reading NumberLoving!

Sharon

Get in touch @numberloving and check out our free and premium resources in our NumberLoving Store.

 

Christmas Christmaths Collection 2014

The week ahead is the last week for many schools before the Christmas holidays and so we have collected some of our favourite Christmaths activities. We would also like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year which brings new and exciting developments for NumberLoving, watch this space!

Christmas Mysteries

Laura has created two mysteries called “how many elves” and “white Christmas”. Mysteries is a thinking skills activities in which pupils use the clue cards, organising the information, making calculations where necessary in order to answer the questions posed. These can be downloaded here .

How many elves?
In this task students must use knowledge of number, percentages and time to work out how many elves Santa needs to hire to make all the Christmas gifts on time!

White Christmas
In this task students have to use the clues to work out where in the UK is most likely to have a white Christmas this year.  All data is accurate. Students could then plot the places on a map to see if they notice any patterns in the probabilities they have calculated.

The Christmas Pirate Game

This game has been adapted from Mr Paul Collins original Pirate Game to give it a Christmas edge. The Christmas version of the game can be downloaded from TES here. Mr Collins blog of Christmas & maths activities is definitely worth checking out here.

Christmas Maths Relay Race

Chris Smith’s relay races include a Christmas themed relay race and can be downloaded from the TES here. For more details on how to run a relay race check out our post on using relays for revision here.

Graphing

Challenge your pupils to use graphing software to create a Christmas tree like this one on Desmos here.

Looking for more ideas?

Also check out our previous posts “Christmaths Collection” and “Christmaths Collection Part 2” for more ideas of Christmas themed maths activities.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

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