You decided to take a road trip! Yay, but don't do all the planning yourself. When you plan a road trip, you use math literally every step of the way. So today, we’re going to walk you through a few steps of planning a road trip so you can see how math helps you get from point A to point B successfully.
Involve your kids and show them how math skills relate to the real world! You can either work on this together or let them figure it out.
- Plan your route (map skills).
- Determine the number of miles to travel round trip (addition).
- How long will it take based on the speed limit of the roads? (division).
- Using your car's average MPG, how many times you'll need to "fill-up" (division).
- Research the cost of gas where you are traveling and average it (data collection).
- Estimate the total cost of gas (multiplication).
- What other costs will you incur: hotel, food, entertainment, etc. (addition).
So take a load off, let your kids do the number crunching. Then enjoy the trip!
