Decimals Project-Based Learning Activity: Create your own Farm.

If you want your math lessons to be an unforgettable experience for your students, be sure to check out this Farm Project.

Project-based learning (PBL) is more than just math education. It makes math lessons really cool, engaging, and memorable. Project-based learning gives students the opportunity to practice important skills for the 21^st century workplace, including collaboration, teamwork, problem-solving, creativity, and critical and interdisciplinary thinking.

This project involves students working in teams to design a farm. They work on the project over an extended period of time – about one week (5-6 lessons). It gives your students the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills through meeting challenges, and solving real-world problems, and keeps students engaged.

What is wonderful about it?

They can work at their own pace and don't even realize they are learning. The concepts of area, money, cost, profit, perimeter, budgeting, and planning are all part of the activity.

Give students more control over their learning by letting them make their own decisions. Students will LOVE picking the animals and crops for their farm. They have to manage their budget to have as much profit as possible and according to their land. Every choice matters, so they need to spend their money wisely to plan their profitable farm. The team competition for the greatest profit leads the students to begin to analyze more and more, and calculate more and more what pays off better.

Students will:

- decide on a farm name,

- choose their animals and crops according to the budget and space requirement,

- plan the farm design (figure the area and perimeter of each field) according to space and budget,

- calculate food and water expenses for animals,

- calculate fertilizing and watering expenses for crops,

- sell their goods from the farm on the market,

- calculate their profit after one season.

This project covers multi-digit addition, subtraction, and multiplication (including decimals), money management, and area and perimeter calculations.

This is a great extension and enrichment for end of the year, back to school, math centers, summer camp, or summer school math activity to practice real-world math.

"Create your own Farm" is a math project designed for students to complete independently or with a group.

This download includes both a printable PDF and digital Google Slides™/PowerPoint™ version.

An example of a completed project and the grading rubric are included.