Exploring Illinois

If you are looking for something to do over the upcoming three-day weekend, you can ask a third grader for a suggestion. They each have spent time over the past few weeks planning a vacation to visit a destination in an Illinois city.

Planning this vacation required students to use estimation, addition and subtraction which are skills we have been focusing on in our first math unit.

To plan their trip, students were given a budget of $300 to pay for entry fees, food, transportation, and lodging for their entire family. A bonus of staying within their budget was that any leftover money could be used to buy a souvenir from their destination.

Students researched to choose their Illinois destination and the costs of their expenses. They created a spreadsheet on Google Sheets to keep track of their spending. As they began filling in costs on their spreadsheet, they used estimation to calculate about how much they had spent so they could continue making choices using the money they had left. I enjoyed seeing them make economical choices to make sure they stayed within their budget!

When they were finished researching, they calculated the exact total cost of their vacation to be certain they had stayed within their budget. Lastly, they created a Google Presentation to share the details of their vacation.

There were so many things the students gained from this real world application. They learned more about the state in which they live, used math skills to budget a trip, and became familiar using Google Slides and Google Sheets. Hopefully, they will get to put their hard work to use and visit this location someday.