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Holiday Greeting Cards:
A Graphing Activity

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Subjects

  • Educational Technology
  • Mathematics
    --Statistics
  • Social Studies
    --Holidays

Grade

  • 3-5
  • 6-8
  • 9-12

Brief Description

Create a graph to show the holidays that account for the highest greeting-card sales.

Brief Description

Students

  • study statistics about the most popular types of greeting cards.
  • use a free online graph-making tool to create a pie chart and/or bar graph to illustrate greeting-card sales statistics.
  • follow directions for creating a graph/chart.

Keywords

graph, pie chart, bar graph, greeting cards, statistics, holidays

Materials Needed

Lesson Plan

Before the Lesson
If you have never before used the free and easy-to-use Create a Graph tool, click the link and give it a shot. Creating beautiful pie and bar graphs is a simple process.

The Lesson
Valentine's Day cards are the second most popular seasonal cards to send. In this activity, students will use a free technology tool to create a simple circle or bar graph that illustrates the most popular seasonal cards.

Note: The greeting card industry divides greeting cards into two categories.
  • "Everyday cards" are cards that people might have reason to send on any/every day of the year. Cards such as birthday cards fall into this category. Also anniversary, get well, friendship, and sympathy cards.
  • "Seasonal cards" are cards that are sent only at specific times of the year. Christmas cards, Valentine cards, Hanukkah cards -- they all fall into this category.
According to greeting-card industry officials, seasonal card sales break down in this way:
  • Christmas cards account for 60% of annual sales.
  • Valentine's Day cards are second, accounting for 25% of sales.
  • Mother's Day cards follow with 4% of sales.
  • Easter cards account for 3% of sales.
  • Father's Day cards account for 3% of sales.
  • Other (Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Halloween) seasonal cards account for 5% of sales.
Write the above statistics on a board or chart in this way:
Christmas cards -- 60%
Valentine's Day cards -- 25%
Mother's Day cards -- 4%
Easter cards -- 3%
Father's Day cards -- 3% Other seasonal cards -- 5%
Introduce students to the easy-to-use and free Create a Graph tool. Walk them through the simple process of creating a bar graph of those statistics. Then invite students to help you as you create a pie chart that shows that same data. The process is so easy that they should be feeling comfortable with it in no time. So give them some more greeting card stats and let them create another bar graph or pie chart on their own to illustrate the following statistics for sales of "every day" greeting cards.
Birthday cards -- 60%
Anniversary cards -- 8%
Get Well cards -- 7%
Friendship cards -- 6%
Sympathy cards -- 6% Other -- 13%
Students might create this new chart/graph in the classroom computer center or in the school's computer lab.

Assessment

Did students follow instructions for creating the graph?

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

National Standards

MATHEMATICS: Representation
GRADES Pre-K - 12
NM-REP.PK-12.1 Create and Use Representations to Organize, Record, and Communicate Mathematical Ideas
NM-REP.PK-12.3 Use Representations to Model and Interpret Physical, Social, and Mathematical Phenomena

SOCIAL SCIENCES: Economics
GRADES K - 4
NSS-EC.K-4.8 Supply and Demand
NSS-EC.K-4.9 Competition in the Marketplace
GRADES 5 - 8
NSS-EC.5-8.8 Supply and Demand
NSS-EC.5-8.9 Competition in the marketplace
GRADES 9 - 12
NSS-EC.9-12.8 Supply and Demand
NSS-EC.9-12.9 Competition in the Marketplace

TECHNOLOGY
GRADES K - 12
NT.K-12.1 Basic Operations and Concepts
NT.K-12.4 Technology Communications Tools

See more Lesson Plans of the Day in our Lesson Plan of the Day Archive. (There you can search for lessons by subject too.) For additional Valentine's Day or other holiday lesson plan, be sure to see Education World's special holiday archive.

For additional math lesson plans, see these Education World resources:

For additional technology lesson plans, see these Education World resources:

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Originally published 02/06/2006
Last updated 06/02/2010