Math Calendars – Yearly, Advent, Hanukkah

Calendars are a great source of math. Not only do they have numbers, they also have squares/rectangles, rows and columns (like matrices) and even units (weeks, days, etc.).

But you can get even more math in a calendar. (I know, crazy, right?!)

All Year Math Calendar

You can get a full year of math with a traditional Gregorian calendar by Theoni Pappas. Buy the 2016 Math Calendar and you’ll get a new problem every day. And the answer is always the day!

Oh, if you’re viewing this from the future (or the past), you can see The Math Calendar from other years here.

Seasonal Math Calendars

If you’re into Christmas, you can try one of the Advent Calendars by NRich Maths. They’ve been pumping them out every year since 2005. Here’s the most recent full list:

And if Hanukkah’s your thing, there’s a neat activity to make a Hanukkah Countdown Calendar over at Education.com. You can also use any advent calendar with the days of the month of Kislev to count up to Hanukkah. This year, 2015, you’d have started on November 13; next year, 2016, you’ll start on November 2.

For other years, you can use the converter to change 1st of Kislev into a Gregorian date. Note, that 2015 is approximately 5776, so you’ll have to adjust from there to get the year you’re currently in.

I found two 25 day calendar templates that look like they’d be fun to use. You don’t have to use mathy things on them, but you certainly can:

Printed 25 Day Math Calendars

I feel like there should be a printed version of an Advent/Hanukkah calendar. And I think it should have math problems that involve the holidays. Like “Greg has 14 candy canes and gives half to Sue and have of the remaining ones to Bill. How many candy canes does Sue have?”

Or “Joan spins a dreidel 25 times and gets Gimel 24 times. Do you think this is a fair dreidel?”

I’m not inclined to make one, today. But perhaps I’ll attempt it next year.