Name: Camping Budget Project – Grades 5–8 Math + Finance
SKU: 6771961512a87c0012df979d
Price: 39.99 USD
Availability: InStock

About this resource

What's inside this resource

Here’s an engaging, summer-themed, real-world math budget project for your middle grades students (in grades 5-8). The math project incorporates useful personal finance and financial literacy skills along with realistic budgeting. Each student in your class is going to plan their purchases for a summer camping trip with friends!

How to Use:

You will assign each student in your class a budget (I recommend between $400-$1,750). A $400 budget will be challenging, and the student might only be able to bring one friend and buy mainly low-cost items. On the other hand, a $1,750 budget will be much more luxurious, and that student will be able to more friends and choose many fancy items.
Students work within their budgets, picking a low, middle, or high-cost choice for each category (tent, sleeping bag, cooler chairs, food and more). Certain items must be multiplied by the total number of campers while others (like a stove) do not.
Students will add up their eleven choices and make sure they stay within their budget. They might need to make a few trade-offs and skip desired items to ensure they have the things they can't camp without.
Finally, your students will calculate how much money they have left, and they will answer reflection questions shopping within a budget, earning more money, or buying things used.

What's Included: 5 Page PDF

It's Ready to Print and Go!

- Title page/teacher instructions

- 2 page budgeting worksheet: This includes all of the item choices and their prices.

- 1 page reflection: This is a great way to start a class discussion about budgeting- an important life skill.

- COMPLETE ANSWER KEY that includes a completed sample budget so you know exactly how to assess this project

Math skills required:

- adding, subtracting, and multiplying with whole numbers (up to the thousands): no decimals!

This project could also be a great addition to a high school life skills classroom!

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Select and total item costs across 11 categories while staying within an assigned dollar budget
Multiply a per-person unit cost (food, lake floatie) by the number of campers to find a total category cost
Calculate leftover funds by subtracting total spending from an assigned budget
Explain trade-offs made when balancing wants against a fixed budget, and propose real-world ways to increase income or decrease costs

Teaching tips

Assign different budget amounts within the $400-$1,750 range to different students so the class compares a range of trade-off strategies during discussion
Remind students before they start that per-person items (food, lake floatie) must be multiplied by their planned number of campers, not added once
Use the four reflection questions as a whole-class discussion starter after students finish their individual budgets, since the answer key shows how one sample student explained the same trade-offs
Have students record their chosen number of campers first, since several line-item totals in the worksheet depend on that number

Skills covered

Budgeting within a constraint — students select low/medium/high-cost items across 11 categories while staying at or under an assigned dollar limit.
Multiplication of unit cost by quantity — students multiply per-person prices (food, floaties) by their planned camper count to find category totals.
Addition and subtraction with multi-digit whole numbers — students total 11 line items and subtract that total from their starting budget to find money left over.
Financial reasoning — students explain their own trade-off decisions and propose real-world strategies for increasing income or reducing costs.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

Do students choose their own budget amount, or is one assigned?

The teacher assigns each student a budget between $400 and $1,750; a $400 budget is tight and typically supports one guest, while $1,750 allows several guests and higher-priced items throughout.

Which items get multiplied by the number of campers?

Food, lake floaties, chairs, and lighting are priced per person or per item needed, so students multiply those unit prices by their planned camper count; the tent, stove, sleeping gear, and kitchen supplies are one flat price regardless of group size.

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Curriculum

Standards, concepts & topics

Standards

5.NBT.B.5 — Fluently multiply multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm.
7.NS.A.3 — Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving the four operations with rational numbers