Supporting a Family Math project brought back

I  that I posted this project a few months ago, but now is actually the time to try it with your class.  It is quite a fun project and builds a nice understanding of how much the Christmas season costs for parents.  I am not sure that students truly understand it.  I am actually doing this project myself this year and will be taking the students to the local mall so that they can do some research on prices for things that they want that are not actually in flyers.  The students are very excited about this and we couldn't have a better energy going into a math assignment.  Anyway here is the link back to my original post. 

http://underbutover.blogspot.ca/2013/04/supporting-family-middle-school-math.html

and here is the link to the assignment at my tpt store:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Helping-a-needy-Family-Math-Project-980311

I hope a few people try out the project because it is definitely worthwhile.

Math Project - Designing your Backyard

When working on Measurement, project ideas are abundant.  There are so many things you can do with it to make it real for the students.  Here is an idea that fits right in.  This may have been one of the first math projects I ever did and the students really enjoyed it.  I basically had the kids design what they would like their backyard to look like.  There of course are certain criteria that the students had to put in but I also allowed them to add whatever they wanted into it.  You could extend this and have them try to figure out the cost, in fact I did it once but my students had a difficult time with it.  Now with more and more access to online research in the class the students can find information on cost a lot easier.

In this I had the students work on graph paper to make my marking a lot easier and I have seen other teachers have them do it on graph style chart paper which really brought the design out. Here is the criteria that I set out for them.
You can have the word document here if you don't want to copy and paste.