About
Are you looking for a way to reinforce essential math skills in an engaging way that helps your students make connections? “The Halloween Hotel” is a real-life math project where students will complete nine different tasks, each one focusing on math skills in a fun Halloween context. Your students won’t even realize that they are reinforcing basic math skills like area, perimeter, addition, subtraction, multiplication, time, and more.
Ideas for Use
Math projects are an ideal way to consolidate learning. I recommend using them as an engaging activity AFTER skills have been learned rather than during learning. You will likely find that engagement is very high and that your students ask to do more of these!
There are many ways to use math projects in your classroom. Some of the most popular are:
•a small-group or pairs activity
•a guided math activity to allow you to see where your students are struggling
•a fun, rewarding way to engage your early finishers
•a low-prep, easy-to-implement activity for a substitute teacher
You might choose to print specific tasks to use during math centers, or you might make a booklet out of all of the tasks and let your students choose which one to do when.
This project now includes a digital version for use with Google Slides™.
What's Included?
Take a look at what you’ll find inside this math project:
TASK #1: SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
This month you’ll be offering room deals for the Monster Convention, throwing a big Halloween party, hosting the hilarious vampire comedy act, serving up the spookiest food in your hotel restaurant, and much more!
Begin by designing some social media advertisements for your hotel. How will you encourage people to visit during October?
TASK #2: THE MONSTER CONVENTION
Monsters are coming from near and far for the annual Monster Convention! Figure out the cost of each monster’s room, taking into consideration the convention discount. Then figure out how many more monsters still need to arrive.
Skills: money, addition, subtraction, picture graph, data interpretation
TASK #3: THE PARTY ROOM
You’re preparing for the biggest night of the year at your hotel – October 31. Every year you throw a huge Halloween party. This year will be better than ever! Let’s plan the party room.
Skills: area, perimeter, multiplication
TASK #4: GHASTLY GAMES
At the Ghastly Game Station, party-goers will be playing some old favorites like Pin the Fangs on the Vampire, Bone Toss, and Mummy Wrapping.
Skills: tally chart, interpreting data, addition, subtraction, multiplication or repeated addition, minutes and seconds
TASK #5: VAMPIRE COMEDY ACT
Victor the Vampire is back with his hilarious comedy show and he’ll be entertaining on the stage at the Halloween Party! Victor tells all of his best Halloween jokes to the crowd.
Skills: multiplication
TASK #6: FLYING COMPETITION
Every year on October 30, you hold a flying competition for witches near and far. This year some of the fastest flyers from around the country are coming to your competition.
Skills: time, elapsed time, ordering and comparing
TASK #7: WITCH’S BREW
The witches will be upset if you don’t have any witch’s brew available for them after the flying competition! Let’s make a big batch.
Skills: simple fractions, multiplication or repeated addition
TASK #8: THE CAULDRON: HOTEL FINE DINING
Your hotel has one of the creepiest restaurants around! It’s no wonder that it’s busy ALL the time! The Cauldron is open all night and is a popular gathering place for all of the spookiest people in town.
Skills: money, addition
TASK #9: OCCUPANCY REPORT
It was another successful October at your hotel! Let’s take a look at the number of rooms that were rented throughout the busiest week of the month.
Skills: bar graph, picture graph, data interpretation
**This math project is best-suited to Grades 3-4, but your 5th graders will have a blast with it as well!**
What Teachers Are Saying
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "I used this activity with a small group of students. They enjoyed the planning and discussions that went into the completion of the project. They liked that it was set up as a themed set and could complete in chunks." Brittiany H.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "My students had fun with this - lots of review and even though some parts were a little challenging to some of my students, it was a "good" challenge! Thank you." Elinor G.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "I am always hesitant when I go to purchase something that has not been purchased much yet, but this was AMAZING. So happy I got it. My student's LOVED the Halloween theme and even for those who do not celebrate Halloween, got really into it. It had them using their imaginations, lead us to social media advertisement discussions and was just overall well received by them as a whole. There were activities that I could use with some students and then others that I could grab and use for extensions for other other students. PLENTY of work to choose from to use. I wish I would have found it earlier to be honest. I will use it next year for the whole month of October. Thank you!" Jamie-lee M.
