Did you know April 26th is National Pretzel Day in the United States? Introduce your students to this fun, lesser-known holiday while also reinforcing pattern recognition, math fact fluency, and basic geometry skills with these quick, easy, and tasty activities!
What you’ll need:
for patterns: bags of mixed pretzel shapes (twists, sticks, snaps/waffles, braids, etc.)
for math facts, shapes, and solids: several bags of small stick pretzels, about 20 sticks per student
for solids: mini marshmallows, about 15 per student
flat shapes and solid figures cards or reference sheets (optional as models)
scratch paper for recording math facts and providing a clean building surface
Open up several bags of differently shaped pretzels. Although this is more fun when there are enough pretzels that each student can get a small cup of each for themselves, these activities are also possible in small groups or as a whole class.
Task students with making different patterns using the pretzel shapes given to them. Make sure they build them on a clean sheet of paper. If doing the activity in larger groups, students can take turns suggesting patterns for the teacher or group leader to make. Alternatively, the teacher can make patterns for the whole class and call on students to describe it and tell which pretzel shape should come next.
When you’re all done making patterns, it’s time to eat them!
Pretzel Math Facts
Math fact fluency helps students develop advanced math skills. Challenge your students to create their own math facts using pretzels.
On a clean sheet of paper, use pretzels to construct numerals and operation symbols. The plus, minus, and multiplication signs are simple to form. The division symbol (or obelus, if you want to be fancy!) is a bit trickier. However, it’s nothing a couple broken crumbs from the pretzel bag or a quick nibble can’t solve!
On a separate piece of paper, record the math facts. See how many different numerals and facts you can create with the pretzel sticks. Challenge students to reach a certain number of facts or to make as many as they can within a time limit. When the time is up, it’s time to snack.
Pretzel sticks are perfect for reviewing line segments, sides, edges, angles, vertices, and the shapes you can create with them!
Set down a clean sheet of paper. Acknowledge one stick as a line segment, which can be turned into the side of a flat shape—or the edge of a solid! Use two sticks to create an angle and vertex. Finally, add a third stick to create our first shape: a triangle. Depending on student age, you can even acknowledge it’s an equilateral triangle and ask what they would need to do to make an isosceles or scalene. (Hint: add more pretzels to get sides of different lengths!)
Challenge students to make as many shapes as they can. Ask them to count the number of sides and name each figure they make. For younger builders, you can provide shapes to model after on cards or with a reference sheet like this one.
Mini marshmallows can literally add another dimension to the activity. Use them to form sturdy vertices, then build in three dimensions! Try making 3- and 4-face pyramids, cubes, rectangular prisms, and more.
And, as always, enjoy a tasty snack after the geometry review is done!
