Back to School Math Activity Needed

Hi everybody. I was wondering if anyone had any good back to school math activities for third grade. I'm looking for something that will take just a day to do. Nothing too intense; just something fun and engaging that gets the kids excited for the year. Any suggestions or success stories?

 

A graphing lesson would be easy enough to do. Let kids survey friends about things such as favorite summer vacation; favorite way to spend a summer afternoon; favorite summer food; etc. Then create graphs of their choice. Don't know how excited the kids will be, though. I'm doing a playdough writing activity for something hands-on and fun, to get them excited about writing. I haven't thought much about math. I'll keep thinking!

 

We usually do a couple of glyphs. A popular one that a lot of teachers across grade levels do is a face: Each student gets a sheet of paper with a face shape on it with eyes. They use their age to draw the number of hairs on the head. (It's always fun to model that step before the kids do it... by the time you get to 14 or 15 hair strands you hear a bunch of gasps from the kids. ) For the nose, they draw a shape based on how they go home (triangle= walk; square= picked up by a parent/adult; circle= bus). My kids draw a smile if they know their ABC's (you can change that up, of course) and a straight line-- I think-- if they don't. They draw a necklace to show if they have brothers (triangles), sisters (squares), and pets (circles).

I hope that made sense; I'm going by memory since that activity is in my classroom.

 

Hi, one of my colleagues did these really cool time capsules. Kids traced their feet on graph paper and counted the squares for area, they measured their height using string, they took a timed multiplication test, they put a photo in, etc... Then at the end of the year, the kids got to open the time capsules, and compare to how they had grown and changed.

 

Thank you all for the suggestions so far. I really like the time capsule idea! I already do a few first day/last day activities, but I'm definitely adding the measuring and time test to it now.

Any more?