Money skillsSeasonal and holidays
Holiday Shopping on a Budget
Christmas Math Project · Financial Literacy
- Grades
- Grades 6–10
- Formats
- Google Slides, PDF, PowerPoint
- Pages
- 27
- Answer keys
- Included
Opens our store on Teachers Pay Teachers, where you can see the full preview and buy.
Give students $300 and a gift list of 8 people, and watch them become smart holiday shoppers! In this no-prep holiday shopping on a budget math project, middle and high school students shop from three realistic store catalogs, calculate percent discounts and sales tax, test free-shipping rules, and investigate whether Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are really deals. Every student's plan is different, and every answer is backed by math.
What's included
- Teacher guide with 4-day pacing, materials and differentiation (support, on level, challenge)
- Standards page (Common Core math + Jump$tart personal finance)
- Project overview with mission, shopping rules and checklist
- Gift list of 8 people with interests, plus a budget plan that leaves room for tax
- 3 full-page store catalogs: an online store with shipping rules, a big-box store with department percent-off sales, and a local handmade shop with a spend-$50 discount
- Warm-up: Read the Catalogs (8 questions)
- Best Price Finder: compare 6 items across stores
- Free Shipping: Worth It? (thresholds, an inequality, delivery dates in business days)
- Black Friday doorbuster ad and Cyber Monday email ad
- Deal Detective, including a price-tracker graph that reveals an inflated "was" price
- Which Deal Is Better? 6 deal showdowns (BOGO, stacked discounts, rebates and more)
- DIY & experience gifts with supply costs and cost per gift
- Gift planner and 4 checkout receipts
- 8 Holiday Twist Cards + response sheet
- Reflection, a savings-plan problem and an exit ticket
- 20-point rubric with a student self-check
- Complete answer keys + a sample completed plan
How to use it
Use it in December (or right after Thanksgiving) in math, consumer math, financial literacy, FACS, advisory or homeroom. It works as a 4-day project, a 3-day version, a sub plan or an enrichment activity. The gift list is fictional and the language is inclusive of many winter holidays, so no student has to share family spending. Print and go: no prep beyond cutting the twist cards.
Skills practiced
Budgetingpercent off & sale pricessales taxunit priceinequalitiescomparison shoppingevaluating advertisingdecision makingwritten reasoning
