I love my job, but of course I am not perfect at performing it.  One of the areas I struggle with the most is to come up with creative and fun projects for my kids to complete... projects that my kids will actually WANT to participate in and put a good effort forth.

So here is my question:  Out of all the projects you have completed for school, what was your favorite?  I'm cool if you answer the question for any subject, but I'm ESPECIALLY interested if you can give me ones that deal with high school math.  

The project that i liked the most was the last Science project ( on high school ) . It was an experiment  , actually a group experiment . We made our own electricity conducting device . It was kinda easy ( although I didn't help too much ) . I really enjoyed that time !

The project that I enjoyed the most was one that I had to do for my Economics class. It was basically a slideshow on ourselves. We had to include a slide specifically about important information about us along with the following topics covered in several more slides:

- Dream Career
- Salary
- Car
- House
- Kids &/or Pets
- Goals (Before & During College)
- Goals (After College)

and then five extra topics of our choosing. So, it was a pretty decent length project.

I remember when, in my junior year, any mention of ‘budget project’ would send shivers down students’ spines.  I had only been attending my high school for less than a year, and I had heard enough about the daunting assignment for those words to have the same effect on me as my peers.  Each year, every senior must do well on this difficult project to pass Government/ Economics.  That puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of any senior who wishes to graduate. 

I signed up for Honors Government/ Economics hoping fervently that the budget project might just somehow pass me by.  Of course, it didn’t, and it took me a while to complete it.  I loved the project because it put students in a real-life situation where they are in charge of their options and where, if a mistake is made, the student got the chance to learn from it without the risk of hurting their future. 

The budget project wass so rigorous that it would be difficult to explain in full, but the name basically says it all.  First, each one of my classmates and I had to learn how to fill out our ‘parent’s’ tax forms based on an income drawn from a hat.  Then, we had to interview a professional with a career that we wish to pursue.  We had to fill out FASFA forms and college applications, and then we had to draw our own incomes from a hat and fill out our own tax forms.  Based on the incomes we drew, we had to come up with budgets for one year as if we were 21 year-old single adults.  We had to come within 11 cents of our budgets, or our grades would drop.  We had to think of everything from loans, apartments, and car payments... to food and clothing expenses and other miscellaneous objects. 

The budget project gave each student practice with life’s most intimidating skills. In order to excel in this assignment, a student had to exhibit the ability to prepare and to think clearly.  A student had to also be responsible and well organized.  If a student lacked in any of these skills even a little, they would have a hard time finishing the project and, ultimately, with handling their own real life budget. 

One of the best things about the project was the fact that each one was be completely unique.  The project put us, as individuals, as close to real life as possible.  I enjoy challenges and was very eager to finish my project and see how I faired.  Upon completion, I hoped to achieve success in managing my own budget and if my memory served me right, I did.  Even though I have unexpectedly enjoyed the project, I was apprehensive to see the reaction of my younger peers when I tell them about it!   I knew they would freak out over it.

One of the things I really appreciated also about the project, was that we had to actually look through ads and cut out prices of real life items we would purchase.  For example, if we thought we would use three mustard bottles in the space of a month, we'd find an ad with the cost of mustard on it, cut it out, and add it to our project.  We'd then use that to calculate our yearly cost, including sales tax.

It was great fun, and I honestly wouldn't have minded doing it even if it wasn't an assignment.  I think it's a great thing for young people to do, in order to see how well they can manage money.

Singelli :

My cousin is actually a math teacher as well, mind she only started a few years ago. Still she told me of some interesting activities she does with her class when it comes to math, next time I chat with her, I'll ask about what sort of projects, if any, does she assign to her classes. I just remember for preparing for a test, she does math jeopardy, with winning teams or rows getting either an extra 5 points on their test or candy when she cannot provide such extra credit.

For myself, there was only one project for math that SLIGHTLY interested me, and it was a project about figuring out how to budget by being given a sample job. My fake job ended up being a hairdresser (which amused me greatly because did nothing with my own hair back then), so I was given a bunch of sample numbers of places I would live, what sort of expenses I may encounter if I want certain things. Essentially, the goal was to find what the most you could do with the budget you had. Some people tried picking bare minimums (no cable, no heat during the winter, and/or choosing to live at home with their parents) to skate by, but the teacher lowered their grade for trying to find the easy way out (she had warned them). The idea was the better your job, the more you were supposed to try and take so you had to do all the math for different expenses. There were also scenarios that were thrown at you that could wreck your budget, such as car breaking down, rent being raised unexpectedly, a pet or someone you are taking care of gets sick, and so on.

That project was done in middle school, so I do not remember all the details on that. Still, it was more interesting then mindlessly doing problems from the book.

I am an English major and math never was a likable subject for me, so my actual favorite projects were usually creative writing areas on classes. There was a project I had in English where we had to make an alternate ending to "The Scarlet Letter," where we had to make sure there was still evidence of the original story. That way, we would not like, make the main character suddenly become a superhero, or change an existing character's personality and such.

I also enjoyed in college, I had a history teacher assign us a project about a book that talks of historical figure (one that was from an era and area that we had or were covering in class) and talk of what we learned, about the book and its opinions, as well as if we approved of how the information was given. He did have to approve of the books, but he really did not ban any books as long as they were non fiction. I did one on "The Murder of Tutankhamen," which the book gave the history of Tutankhamen and lead up to whom they suspected murdered him. Surprised me that there were non fiction books I actually found enjoyable, but that could just be the reader and writer in me.

EDIT: I just realized you also covered a budget project, Singelli, and a much more expansive one. I suppose since yours was for... high school? Well, it was more detailed, heh.

ruesen :  That's very interesting indeed.  Our history teachers or finance teachers don't do anything like it but I think it's a VERY educational project.  Most kids seem to think money grows off trees, or that they can buy whatever they want WHENEVER they want.  I've thought of making my own children do it just as a learning experience, whenever I have any (children, that is).

Oldschool41 :  That sounds like a lot of fun! How did you do that?  Did you do it through webcam or forum boards, or what?

Singelli : We had set up a webcam and we chatted through that. The debate almost didn't happen since we were having problems with getting the webcame to function properly (and would have sucked to cancel since my Representative for the House of Reps was visiting along with some "green media")

I'm planning on doing a side project on the economical history of Gallifrey for my economics class. My friend did one today on the Galactic Empire. My economics teacher is a huge sci-fi nerd, much like myself.

As for projects I've done in the past, I can't really say what my favorite of all time would have been as I've done so many throughout the past 10 years. Perhaps it was the game I made for my major science project last year. It wasn't exactly great, being a simple Batch game, but I got a good mark so it was alright.

we had to make a poster, and th poster must have had pictures about us, pictures of things we like and we had to also write on it some stuff with markers. then we hung them in the hall.

I would say that one of my favorite projects was for science and one of the options was to make a song/rap video. It had to be at least 2 minutes long, the lyrics had to make sense, the lyrics had to be printed on paper, and it had to contain 10 of the parts of an animal or plant cell. This was one of my favorite all time projects. Sadly don't have an example of it to share, but if I had one, I would show you it. This project is really enjoyable and especially enjoyable for those who are "camera-happy."

Fireflame626 :  Hehe.  I'm not very 'camera happy', but I love my students who are comfortable enough to do things like that.  Some of my favorite projects that have been turned in to me... were ones in which my students recorded songs or taped plays based off whatever we were studying.  They were skilled masterpieces I never could attempt!

In 6th grade. We had a genetics project. Where a dominant R would overrule a recessive r. But we grabbed into a bag and pulled out certain phenotypes. Physical appearance. And we made a thin out of marsh mellows called reebop babies. That was the best chapter in science.

My favorite project was when I drew the us map it was the easiest project in my life at first I didn't think it would be easy but it turned out to be 

I have had many projects and they always seems to be due on the same thing like I had 3 projects due one day then 2 projects due the next day after that so I don't have time to really see  how fun my projects are, but I think the most fun projects I have ever done was to recreate a diarama of the battle of Yorktown. It was fun gluing in toy soldiers is specific places and making the battle look awesome and I got A+ on it. Also my teacher wanted to keep it as an example since it was so good and she liked my project the best out of everyone else project so that was my favorite project

I never enjoy school projects that much because it takes up so much time. But there are a few exceptions. I had to do a multimedia assignment on convincing someone not to throw their old cell phone away due to the environmental impact. Since I make electronic music on a regular basis, I wrote an electro hip-hop song called "Don't Pitch That Cell Phone". I wrote up the lyrics and put the song together and it turned out great! (I can sing and rap so good, I make autotune sound like a vocoder)

Got an A+