Crazy Teaching Idea: Making Vacation Packets Fun!!!

It's long been a holiday tradition for teachers ( especially for teacher's of impoverished students it seems) to provide students with "homework packets" over vacation. I guess it's a simple enough premise; Students tend to forget everything they learned over long absences from institutionalized learning.

But does it have to be so boring?

Here are my ideas for alternatives:

1. Graph the daily temperature high's and low's. Especially in Minnesota where the temps dip into the negatives as well as the positives, it's a great opportunity to practice adding and subtracting negative numbers.

2. Graph the sunrise and sunset times as well as the resulting quantity of daylight hours. Again, this activity works a lot better in Minnesota than say in Colombia or other locales near the equator. Sorry, Jon.

3. We are currently studying the phases of the moon and the Earth's rotation/revolution around the sun. The other day my students graphed the amount of sunlight per day for the year. But they only had data for ONE day per month, the 21st. Vacation would give them a chance to graph every day.

4. Math Games: They're a lot more fun than drill and practice but often have the same results--repeated practice of specific skills. And if kids KNEW that we were having a cribbage/ top it / product game tournament in January to coincide with the Olympics, then wouldn't they practice more???

Peace,

M.R. Timevapore