Counting Our Blessings: A Thanksgiving Math Activity
When most people think of Thanksgiving, they think of food: turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie. But what is the true meaning of Thanksgiving? Everyone knows the purpose of Thanksgiving is to take time out of our busy lives to give thanks, yet oftentimes giving thanks is eclipsed by Black Friday deals and Christmas shopping. So why not refocus ourselves and our students on gratitude this holiday season by implementing a math activity on counting our blessings and do a service activity.
What does counting our blessings have in common with math? That’s an easy question to answer in the younger grades that have standards involving counting. But what about the older grades? I think it can connect to rational numbers, number systems, statistics, and of course infinity ♾️😉.
The introductory activity for each grade level will be the same, but then the activity branches out to topics appropriate to the different grade level standards. These will all be discussed below.
Note: This activity is a great follow up for my kindergarten lesson on Engaging Math Lesson: Zero Zebras and Infinity and my middle and high school lesson A Mathematical Journey through Zero & Infinity-Part 1: A Mystery Box, Some Books, and a Contest.
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The Activity
A. Launching the Activity (All Grade Levels)
Get an empty box. You can decorate it with wrapping paper if you want to make it extra special. Review the mathematical name of a box, the number of its vertices, and the number of its edges. Then ask students “What’s in the box?” Most likely they will tell you there is nothing in the box. (If students have done one of my previous lessons on Zero Zebras and a Mystery Box for early elementary or middle/high school, they may have more precise mathematical answers.) Tell your students that although it may be empty now, you are going to make a Blessing Box and fill it with blessings.
Give students strips of paper, index cards, or sticky notes. Give students time to write as many blessings as they can. You can do this in class or can make it an optional homework assignment. Younger students may need to draw pictures or work with a parent at home to write their blessings. Tell students there will be a prize for whomever writes the most blessings. 🏆
B. Counting the Blessings
Preschool and Kindergarten
For Kindergartners, the simple act of counting is hard enough. Start with students counting their own blessings. Then have them combine their blessings with one or two other students and have them collectively count their blessings. For students who are struggling to write numbers, the teacher or a partner may need to help them record their blessings. Although, the students are not required to add large numbers at this grade level, the teacher can model addition by writing all the groups blessings on the board and adding them.
Another option could be to have the students write all their blessings on sticky notes and then make a long line of blessings in the hallway before adding them to the box. This will give them a visual understanding of the number line and the largeness of the numbers. Have them practice saying the number names in the standard order, pairing each number with the blessing. You can have also have them compare the number of blessings they wrote with a classmate to see whose is larger.
Another idea is to have them match the number of their blessings to a number mat (if it’s under 12).
Grade 1
In first grade, students need to relate counting to addition and subtraction (1.OA.5). According the Progressions for the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (draft), 2011 “Counting on should be seen as a thinking strategy, not a rote method. It involves seeing the first addend as embedded in the total, and it involves a conceptual interplay between counting and the cardinality in the first addend (shifting from the cardinal meaning of the first addend to the counting meaning). Finally, there is a level of abstraction involved in counting on, because students are counting the words rather than objects. Number words have become objects to students.”
So in first grade, have the kids join a partner. Each person should have counted their own blessings. Then have them add their partner’s blessings to theirs by counting on. Then connect the counting on problem to a subtraction problem.
Grade 2
Have students count up their blessings and then add them together practicing their addition skills (2.OA.1).
Grade 5
Have students count up their blessings. Record each students number on the board, and then have students write a numerical expression before adding them together. Encourage students to look for patterns to make the addition easier such as adding a 19 and 11 together to make 30. Encourage them to put the compatible numbers together in their expression by using parenthesis.
Middle School and High School Algebra
Use the concept of counting blessings as an opportunity to conduct a simple statistical experiment and extend gratitude throughout the whole school. Have students count up all their blessings in the classroom. Then have them extend their data collection to the rest of school. The question of interest might be something like the following: “How blessed are your school’s students?” It might be helpful to design an experiment using their grade level statistics standards and the GAISE Statistics Problem-Solving Framework. (See Ohio’s Model Curriculum with Instructional Strategies for ideas on how to incorporate statistics in the classroom and more information on the GAISE model.) To emphasize decision making in data collections, students may want to discuss if a blessing can be counted twice. For example, if two people said that their dog is a blessing, would that count as one blessing or two since they are two different dogs. The same reasoning could be applied to houses etc. This gives students the ability to consider what is data and how do we design a good question to capture the data that we desire.
C. Connecting to Infinity
Early Grades (K-2)
Ask students how many blessings will be in the box if all the classrooms in the building filled out sticky notes with their blessings. (Again, this lesson fits seamlessly with my post Engaging Math Lesson: Zero Zebras and Infinity.) If you want, you can ask other teachers to have their classes fill out sticky notes as well and give them to your class, or you can just leave it as a hypothetical question. Ask students if the number of blessings is (or would be) still countable. Students should realize they are still countable, but it would take a really long time. You may even have an overzealous student who offers to count them during recess!
Then ask them “What if all the students in all the classrooms in the whole world filled out sticky notes with their blessings and put them in the box, how many blessings would they have?” At this juncture they should realize that although technically countable it becomes almost impossible to count.
Write the infinity symbol on the board: ∞, and explain that infinity represents a number for something that is too big to count. It’s bigger than a million, or a zillion, or even a google (Note: A google is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes). Even when you have the biggest number in the world you can always add 1 more to it to make it bigger. Infinity is always bigger than the biggest number.
Refer to your empty box, and ask students what makes the “Blessing Box” so special.
If your students did the activity with the zero box, ask them if they would rather have a zero box or a blessing box and why?
After considering their blessings, ask students how they could respond. Make a connection between counting your blessings and Thanksgiving.
Middle School, High School Algebra, Precalculus and Calculus
Middle Schoolers love to think about infinity! For 6th and 7th graders, connect the concept of infinity to a number line (6.NS.6, 6.NS.7, 6.NS.8, 7.NS.1 and 7.NS.3).
For 8th graders and Algebra 1 students, it fits nicely within the context of the formal discussion about the rational number system. For students to understand rational numbers, it is sometime helpful to consider other numbers that are not rational or not real such as imaginary numbers. Explain to your students that infinity doesn’t fit into the real number system because it’s more of a concept than a number, however we sometimes treat infinity it as a number especially in advanced mathematics.
Discussions about infinity are an obvious fit for the Precalculus and Calculus students.
Put the infinity symbol on the board and have students add 1 to infinity. Then have them add one again. Have them continue to add 1 to infinity until they realize that infinity plus anything is still infinity. Then have them add infinity plus infinity. This will be harder for them but explain that infinity plus infinity is still infinity. If you are really ambitious or teach higher level classes, you could also talk about subtraction from infinity. For middle school students and Algebra 1 students that might get a little complicated unless you really want to talk about limits to wet their interest in Calculus and the STEM pathway. Rather it might be more productive to talk about negative infinity especially with regards to the number line.
D. Musical Connections
Have students listen to Seph Schlueter’s “Counting My Blessings” song. After answering the questions below, you may also want to watch the video.
Ask students the following questions about “Counting My Blessings”:
- How does is make you feel?
- What do you think the song means?
- When you close your eyes, what images come to mind?
- How does this connect to the concept of infinity in math class?
E. Bible Connection for Homeschoolers and Christian Schools
If you homeschool or teach in a Christian school, here are some verses that discuss the infinite nature of God. You can talk about how God knows “infinitely much” or is omniscient, and that He has been alive for an infinite amount of time.
“Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” ~Psalm 90: 2, NIV
“Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.” ~Psalm 147: 5, NIV
Turning Gratitude into Action
Thanksgiving is a good time to count your blessings. After counting the infinite blessings there are in the world, it might be helpful to discuss how some people have more blessings than other. So those of us with more access to necessities should bless other people by sharing with those in need. This would be a great time to have a food drive and see how many blessings you can give away.
Ladder Learns to Pray
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