Easter Maths Activities for KS2: Topical Maths Problem Solving
With pupils getting excited about the abundance of chocolate and pancakes that may be about to come their way, we thought that it was time for some Easter maths activities and pancake day maths investigations for KS2!
The activities in this blog post the perfect teaching resource for the last week of the spring term or to send home over the Easter holidays.
A Lent-themed idea for primary teachers
People who observe Lent – typically but not always Christians – make a promise or a commitment. The commitments people usually make involve some kind of self-improvement or giving up a luxury or bad habit; such as coffee, or unhealthy foods like pizza and chocolate.
For Christians, Lent can also mean a time of fasting, which celebrates Jesus and his journey into the desert for 40 days. And Easter Eggs at Easter are the feast at the end of the fast!
We wanted to share an idea around commitment with you that one of our teacher colleagues used to adopt, with great success in maths.
She would use Lent as an opportunity to encourage children to ‘give up giving up on maths’ for six weeks.
The deal was that if they made an extra special effort to develop a positive attitude to maths then at the end of the six weeks, they would all be rewarded (yes, often with chocolates).
Note, the focus of this kind of deal must be around effort and mindset, not attainment in order for it to work.
Emphasise the importance of perseverance, diligence and a growth mindset. Then, after all their hard work, you can reward them with their KS2 Easter maths activities!
Why is perseverance important?
By encouraging your pupils to give up giving up on maths, you emphasise important qualities such as tenacity and determination. And, help your pupils put them into practice. Reinforce this behaviour, while focusing on improving confidence and learning around maths.
Plus, making a deal with your class is a great way to engage them and even create better relationships and rapport.
It’s worth thinking about this deal and talking about this aspect of Lent with your pupils. And who knows, maybe it’s a deal you could make with your children for their maths lessons for a few weeks this year or next?
KS2 Easter maths activities
Let’s get the ball rolling with these Easter maths activities and maths problem solving. Challenge your pupils to complete the activities below, and reward them for doing so.
If you model the ‘give up giving up’ deal over one lesson you’ll soon show them how it’s done. But don’t forget to keep your end of the bargain too.
While these Easter maths activities are designed for KS2, they easily adaptable and can be used as KS1 Easter maths activities. Simply change the numbers to match the level of knowledge in your class!
1. Chocolate shapes
Holly cannot eat any chocolates from her favourite selection box because she has given up chocolate for Lent.
Instead of eating them, she decides to do an investigation.
These are the shapes of the chocolates she has in her box. Sides marked x are the same length. Each colour represents a different shape:
Using the picture above, answer these questions:
2. Coffee calculations
Each day, Mr Jackson drinks 3 cups of instant coffee at home, and twice a week he buys coffee from his local coffee shop.
A UK coffee shop sells coffee for £2.75 per cup.
A 200g jar of instant coffee costs £4.60.
1.8g makes 1 cup of coffee.
Using the information above, read and answer the questions below:
How much money could Mr Jackson save if he gives up coffee for Lent? Round amounts of money to the nearest penny.
How much money would he save if he gave up just the coffee he buys from his local shop?
3 Easter bunny bonanza
150 baby rabbits have been born at farmer Jones’ farm this Easter. She won’t have room to keep them all on her farm once they are grown up, so she has to give some away to caring homes that would like a bunny as a pet!
Using the information above, read and answer the questions below:
If farmer Jones gives away two-thirds of the 150 rabbits, how many will she have left?
If farmer Jones manages to give away 97 of the rabbits, how many will she have left?
Farmer Jones wants to charge people £1.50 to take a pet rabbit home with them. She is going to give this money to a Rabbit charity and manages to sell all of the rabbits. How much money has she raised for the rabbit charity?
Pancake day investigations: KS2
1. Shrove Tuesday
Read the following information to help you answer question 1:
A pancake house made 264 pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Jack’s family ate 2.5 times as many pancakes as Lara’s family. Ali’s family ate 1/8 of the total number of pancakes made. Lara’s family ate 2/3 of the amount that Ali’s family ate.
Use these clues to work out how to answer the questions:
2. Pancake on your head race
Ask your pupils to walk across the playground – or alternatively the classroom – with a pancake on their head. Make them walk quite quickly. Each time they drop the pancake they must measure the distance from where it fell to the start. Each time they complete the distance add another pancake to the stack.
Extension task
Ask your pupils to work out how many times they would need to walk across the area without dropping the pancake in order, or work out the average distance walked before dropping pancake for the whole class.
3. Pancake sauce combinations
Billy wants to have 2 sauces on his pancakes. Use the information below to investigate the different combinations of 2 sauces he could have:
A Pancake House offers 6 pancake sauces:
Vanilla
Strawberry
Chocolate
Toffee
Lemon
Maple
At Third Space Learning, our online one to one maths lessons are created by a team of maths pedagogy experts to reflect real life contexts. This helps make learning relatable, and increase pupil engagement and understanding.
Looking for more? Take a look at these other maths problem solving investigations for KS2 or fun maths activities for KS1 and KS2 and fun maths lessons for KS2
Here’s our complete list of topical maths investigations for year 5 and year 6.
More KS2 maths investigations
We’ve got more fun KS2 maths investigations, all free for UK primary schools based around the following key events in a primary school during Autumn, Spring and Summer Term.
To get the complete set download the latest versions of our topical maths problems:
Or follow any links below
Topical maths investigations
And if that’s not enough we’ve even got maths activities for Year 5 and Year 6 for events you’re likely to celebrate in primary school but their dates can change from year to year.
Football maths activities (UEFA cup or FA cup)
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