Beep beep! Honk honk! Put students in the driver’s seat with these realistic math stations. Your students will love hopping in the car and heading out to get lunch at the drive-thru–no driver’s license required. Bonus, these math stations are great for any level.
What You’ll Need
Menu
- Get your hands on any of our Menu Math activity books that come with full color menus, and that means no prep necessary. Plus, they are packed with reproducible practice pages and come in multiple levels.
- Snap a picture. Next time you’re at your favorite drive-thru restaurant, take a picture of the menu, print it, and then laminate.
- Make your own kid-friendly menu.
Pencils and Paper
Chairs, four per station
Set-Up
Create several stations, or let’s call them “restaurants,” throughout your classroom. At each restaurant have a menu (or a few copies of the menu for each student), pencils, and paper. Split students into groups of four or five, but no more than five. Assign one student per station to be the cashier; this student will take the orders.
In front of each restaurant line up four chairs, two in front and two in back, just like a car. Put four students in the “car” and send them to get lunch.
Play
From here, you have some flexibility. Differentiate your instructions by station/restaurant, group, skill level, or even by the age of your students. Try these five variations:
1) All four students choose one item from the menu. The driver places the order with the cashier, who writes the order down and works the math problem. The cashier gives the order total. Meanwhile, each student in the car should work the math problem as well. Did everyone get the same answer?
2) At each station include an activity page–any activity that matches the corresponding menu you’ve chosen to use. This takes some of the spontaneity out of the ordering process, plus you can easily include an answer key so that students can self check their work. Just as above, have four students in the car and a cashier. Each student should choose a word problem from the page and solve it. Then each student should take turns practicing ordering their items from the cashier telling the cashier how much they owe. The cashier can be in charge of the answer key at this station and check their answers.
3) At the beginning, give each student a budget of $20 with the intention that students will visit three restaurants. Have students use play money or keep track of their spending on a piece of paper. As they travel through the stations ordering food, they will need to be careful about how much money they spend.
4) For your upper level students, advise that they leave the cashier a tip. What is 15%, 18%, or 20% of your total order?
5) Or hand out these coupons <free download>. Give a few coupons to each group to use throughout their travels. These generic coupons will prompt students to deduct dollars, percents, and even have them reading for details.
Lastly, to ensure variety, before students move on to the next restaurant have them rotate jobs/positions. The cashier hops into the car and the driver hops out to now be the cashier at the restaurant. And the student in the front passenger seat becomes the driver at the next restaurant.
Put students in the driver’s seat with these realistic, menu math stations from @remediapub
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Fun Extras
- Include play money so that students can practice paying and making change.
- Give students blank checks to pay for their meals so they can practice writing checks and keeping a check register.
- Give the cashier an apron and work hat to wear.
- Use this blank restaurant receipt <free download> to help students tally their orders.
- Make a steering wheel out of cardboard to include with each car for the driver to hold.
Bonus Tip: Do these Drive-Thru Menu Math Stations before lunch. Everyone’s stomachs will be growling by the end!
Get our real-life Menu Math activity books for your classroom! From ice cream cones and chocolate shakes to hamburgers and French fries, students will get their fill as they work through hundreds of real-life word problems. Students figure food costs, total restaurant checks, make change, and more! Each book includes a full-color realistic menu that students must refer to figure costs when ordering.
