For the past three weeks, Ms. Kooistra's 6th grade applied math class has been using their knowledge of unit cost to plan gardens. One of her students, Hannah, explained that unit cost is calculating the price per item by dividing the price by the total number of items. The students used this to calculate the cost per seed in order to find an estimate for each garden.

Other components in this project included graphing and plotting the plants and making and sticking to a budget. After researching how much space different plants need to grow, students plotted them on graph paper accordingly. Dalinee and Hannah, both 6th grade students, said their favorite part was picking out the pretty flowers, but it was difficult to space the flowers and make sure they had enough room to grow. Students also needed to come up with a scale unit for their graphs. The most common scale was one box on the graph paper equals one foot.

Overall, Ms. Kooistra said she is happy with how the projects turned out.

"Most were very informative and creative, but a few spent too much time on the flowers and not enough on the math," she said.