When I taught third grade a few years ago, it was a pretty dire situation by the time we got to late November. Students were tired. Teacher was crabby. What were we going to do?

Well, being the math geek I am, I figured some math would solve the problem. Yes?

Well, maybe not, but we did it anyway!

Each person was “given” $10.00 to spend on their own personal Thanksgiving meal. They figured out what they wanted to “eat” and used adding and subtracting to figure out how much they had left.

There was a lot of interesting conversation going on at this point. Who knew so many kids don’t like turkey? Green beans I wasn’t surprised by, but turkey? Oh well…they found other yummy things to put on their plates.

Then they could create their plate thanks to Google and some awesome images!

As soon as they knew what they wanted to “eat,” and what it would cost, they could make their plate.

The one on the bottom right? Has a fork, knife, spoon and butter. Hilarious!

We had a lot of fun choosing our Thanksgiving menu items, adding up our total spent and making sure we didn’t go over our $10.00 budgets.

Making our Thanksgiving meal certainly helped up the mood around the classroom!

Now that I teach 5th grade, things haven’t changed much! The end of the month is always challenging.

With the older students, we solve Thanksgiving themed word problems and plan our perfect Thanksgiving dinner. Students use all the operations to solve problems!

It’s fun way to keep kids thinking and working, even though they are wound up and ready for a break! Click the picture or right {here} to take you to this resource in my TpT store.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!