Winter math activities that double as décor

We're getting so close to winter break! In this post, there is a collection of winter-themed math activities that hit the standards while keeping students engaged in learning their math before and after winter break. Many of the activities below were made to double as colorful winter bulletin board displays of student work.

Slope winter snowflake activity

The first activity is a slope winter snowflake activity where students find the slopes of lines given a table, then decorate your classroom with their finished snowflakes. Anna L's students called their slope snowflakes "slope flakes" as they worked on the slope review activity coming back from winter break.

Winter proportional relationships snowflakes

There's a similar set of winter proportional relationships snowflakes for younger students. students plot coordinates of proportional relationships, then determine the equation of each snowflake's line. 

Winter snowflake 2-step equations

If your students are solving 2-step equations this winter, they can practice their solving on this winter snowflake 2-step equations sheet. After solving, students will need to read the inequalities in the key to figure out which color to color each section of their snowflake.

Slopes between winter animal pictures

This winter slope activity has students calculating the slopes between winter animal pictures in the coordinate plane. The x-axis is in months, and the y-axis is in days of the month. It's a fun, low-stress way to review slope.

Multiplying decimals mittens

If your students need practice multiplying decimals, these multiplying decimals mittens make a colorful winter bulletin board display of student work.

Winter picture puzzles math escape room

For a digital activity, this winter picture puzzles escape room has students solving for the values of winter pictures before going on to the next puzzle. 

Winter picture puzzles math escape room

The escape room is self-checking in Google Forms, and also comes as a printable PDF for days off devices. 

Editable New Year's math review

This is year #2 of updating this editable New Year's math review. There are versions for 7th grade math, 8th grade math, and algebra, and will be updated every year. They're each editable in PowerPoint so that you can customize the activity to your students' needs.

You can browse all winter math activities here: winter math

New Year 2026 Editable Algebra Review Coloring Activity

This editable algebra review coloring activity got its New Year's 2026 update today. It can be used to refresh skills or as midterm review when we come back from winter break. Topics include:

• Multiplying binomials 
• Factoring quadratic trinomials 
• Finding parallel and perpendicular lines through given points
• Calculating slope and y-intercept from a table 
• Converting standard form equations to slope-intercept form 
• Identifying domain and range of graphs

This activity is editable in PowerPoint and includes 20 questions. 

Students answer the questions on their worksheets, then color their 2026 based on the key. An answer key is included.

Editable Algebra 1 Review Coloring Activity

There's a 7th grade version and an 8th grade version that will also get their 2026 updates soon.

More posts:

Math Word Walls

Digital Math Escape Rooms

Math Word Wall Photos Shared By Teachers

Free Discriminant Cheat Sheet for your Quadratic Formula Unit

In this post, I want to share a few resources for teaching the discriminant as part of a Quadratic Formula unit. 

This simple discriminant cheat sheet helps students make the connection between the value of the Quadratic Formula's discriminant and the number of real solutions the equation will have. It also shows examples of graphs with 1, 2, and 0 zeros and what the discriminant will look like in each case.

Domain and Range Finder Tools

Do your students struggle finding domain and range of graphs? I made a couple printable domain and range tools to help our students this year.

There are directions pointing students to look at x for domain and y for range as they drag each tool across the graphs. There are also directions printed on the tool for what to record for domain and range when a graph has an arrow.

We have always used rulers to find where graphs start and stop, but I wanted something a bit more self-teaching for our students this year. The graph cards in the photo are a free download on my blog here.

You can find the domain and range finder tools here on my website.

I also made a new domain and range of graphs cheat sheet for our students that you can find here in my drive.

UPDATE: A 3rd tool for finding increasing/decreasing intervals of graphs has been added to the file linked below.

> Browse all domain and range activities

Domain & Range Finder Tools

SIX SEVEN! Real Number System Math Sorting Activity

If you're a middle school teacher, I'm sure you've been hearing "Six Seven!" nonstop this year!  

We hadn't heard it in our algebra 2 class until about a month ago, when the 67 floodgates finally opened and now "67!" is an almost daily occurrence. It came up recently when solving x^2 - x = 42 (though this was on purpose).

As math teacher Ms. Campbell wrote, "Truth be told, it's the least offensive tiktok trend in years (at least for me!) And math teachers sure can have fun with it." Very true. And it's nice that math finally made it into a trend!

Six Seven Number Sort

This SIX SEVEN real number system sorting activity has students sorting numbers made of up of sixes and sevens into whole numbers, integers, rational numbers and irrational numbers categories. The activity includes the sorting mat, 18 numbers to sort, and a key.

Free Perfect Squares and imaginary numbers sheet

 

This past week, we started learning about imaginary numbers in algebra 2, which will lead into solving with the Quadratic Formula. I made this simple cheat sheet for the students so they can quickly check if a number is a perfect square and be reminded of how imaginary numbers work when simplifying and multiplying. 

2 free factoring quadratic trinomial cheat sheets

What's your favorite method for factoring quadratic trinomials? For me, it's the AC method with grouping because there's no guess and check, which frustrated me as a high school student. I remember endlessly erasing my work, and settling with "close enough" on some problems. The box, or area, method has grown on me over the years, especially how it links back to multiplying polynomials.

The structure of the AC method works for me, and is the method I have used most when teaching students to factor. I don't know when I learned it, but I remember thinking that it would have been a helpful tool for me in high school. If making the list of factors is difficult, students can divide AC with 2, 3, 4, ... with a calculator and write down any quotients without decimals, checking which factor pair adds to B.

I made a couple factoring quadratics cheat sheets and posted them on Facebook this week.

We're getting to factoring in a few weeks after imaginary number operations, Quadratic Formula and solving with square roots and we're going to teach the kids the box (area) method, which they may have seen in algebra 1. AC with grouping will be the backup plan for students who aren't clicking with the box method. Multiplication charts will also be available to students who need them.

Box method factoring

AC method with grouping

If you are teaching factoring this year, I wanted to share the two cheat sheets above in case you find them helpful. I also wanted to mention that the cheat sheets I share are never intended to be standalone teaching tools. They always go along with lessons as a way to help students through independent work. This was something that came up this week, too. 

algebra word wall box method posters

A teacher recently requested box method factoring references be added to the algebra word wall, so I added these two posters.

> Browse all Quadratics activities

You can download the two factoring cheat sheets free here.

For practice, there's a free set of solve by factoring task cards here.

 

> Browse all free math cheat sheets

free math resource library