Middle School Math Projects: Ideas for Students and Parents

Why Should My Child Do Math Projects?

Projects are often completed over the course of several work sessions, which allows your student to take his or her time and enjoy the topic that's being studied. Additionally, because projects take a lot of time and effort, your child will likely gain an in-depth understanding of the topic. For your middle school student, you could present projects that involve 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes, equations and expressions, ratio and proportion or how to use a collection of data to make inferences and statistical predictions.

Will It Fly?

Have your child begin this project by planning how to make a kite using only household items. For instance, your child could use straws to create the base of the kite. During the planning phase, your child will need to address what items he or she will need and how the items will be used to build the kite. Depending on your child's ability level, you may have him or her come up with more than one set of kite building plans.

After completing the planning phase, have your child record predictions about the kite. These predictions could include how likely the kite is to fly or if it will be able to withstand the wind. For the third phase of the project, have your child actually build the kite using the previously identified items and his or her plans. This step may take your child several days to complete.

Once the kite has been completed, allow your child to fly it and test his or her predictions. Discuss possible changes that would improve the structure and flying ability of the kite.

What Can You Tell?

For this project, have your child record weather data for a week. This could include what weather he or she sees outside, as well as things like humidity or chance of rain. After recording this information, have your child use the data to create a graph. Be sure that your child accurately titles the graph and labels the x and y-axes.

It should be up to your child to discover the best way to represent each section of data (humidity, chance of rain, actual weather conditions) in the graph. After completing the graph, ask your child to represent the weather data in a numerical form. For instance, what percentage of the week was sunny? Or, you could ask, 'What fraction of the week was windy?' You could also have your child convert each of these numerical forms into a decimal form.