This week’s blog has been written by Mr Manktelow, Head of Maths at Bethany School. He writes about the Maths Department spreading festive cheer through creative lessons like the ‘Merry Mathsmas’ show, hands-on mathematical activities and fun projects tied to “The 12 Days of Christmas”.

With this blog going out with 33 days until Christmas, or to be more accurate and based on the mean time that this weekly blog has been published since September there are only 2,793,420 seconds or 46,557 minutes until the big day!

The Maths Department have already started to think, ‘It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,’ and therefore, we have been planning ways to incorporate Christmas into lessons.

This year, Key Stage 3 classes will be taking part in something called ‘Merry Mathsmas’, where pupils will be taking part in an online show hosted by mathematician Zoe Griffiths. They will be exploring all things mathematical and festive. Pupils will participate in a magic trick linked to Christmas crackers, using a famous mathematical theorem in a hands-on activity making cut-out decorations, and play a festive lottery with the chance to win a prize.

Pupils have always enjoyed the Maths Advent Calendar that is available here with a new puzzle to solve each day. Pupils may wish to have a go at these during the holidays as the end of term falls with just under half (48%) of the doors still shut.

I am sure that Christmas co-ordinate plotting, origami, mistletoe and lines, volume of baubles, fractal Christmas cards and Christmas trees will all make an appearance as will ‘The Elf Game’, an end-of-term highlight, particularly among the Year 11’s.

No dive into festive mathematics is complete without the undoubted classic ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ and who can forget Roberts’s rendition at House Shout last year? It is a wonderfully mathematical song and any festive quiz that you take part in this year will likely feature a question based on the song, so I thought I would include this handy guide to help you out.

*however for the 8th gift, ‘8 maids a-milking’ we are to assume that they need something to milk, so if they are each milking a 4-legged animal such as a cow, goat or sheep rather than milking a nut, oat or bean then these extra legs need to be accounted for, so the 8th gift would be:

If, however, the question is based on the number of wings in the song then the following table is relevant:

As everyone’s favourite line, 5 gold rings are rather left out of these calculations. So, at the time of writing the cost of 1g of gold is currently £66.70.

According to Google the average ring size in the UK is a size 6, so a typical ring that is 5mm wide and 1.6mm thick would have a weight 4.3 grams.

Therefore a solid gold size 6 ring would cost £286.81 and to give 5 gold rings, 8 times would cost £11472.40.

I hope that this information helps.

Feliz Navidad and happy quizzing.

Mr Manktelow

Head of Maths