Happy Holidays! 3 Summer Maths Investigations for KS2

August 25, 2023 | 2 min read

David Leighton

The summer holidays are almost upon us so time to bring out our summer holiday maths investigations for KS2. These are tried and tested staples from our series of topical maths resources.

They’re fun maths investigations, they work, and they’re sufficiently open ended activities to use in Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 or Year 6 maths lessons. Or you can give them for homework over the holidays!

As part of our series of topical Maths investigations, turning calendar dates into fun activities for Key Stage 2 around the country, we’ve created some topical activities with a summer twist.

We’re thinking ice cream, theme parks and beaches – with a dash of reasoning & problem solving thrown into the mix. Plus, as an added bonus, there investigations will cut your planning time down to printing and marking.

These activities are all available to print from our Topical Maths Summer 2 Resource Pack printable, so you can do them in class or pupils can take them home to complete over the holidays.

Summer Holiday Maths Activity 1: Ice Cream

Ice cream is always a popular treat in the holidays. Though we all know they are delicious, who knew they could be used as part of a holiday Maths investigation?

Try this one out with your pupils, or download the free printable worksheet here and give it to them to try over the summer holidays:

Pick an ice cream! The only catch is, you can have 3 different flavours of ice cream on your cone. So which 3 flavours would you choose?

Holiday maths 2

Now work out: how many different combinations could you have with those 3 flavours?

What did you come up with?

Holiday Maths Pack

A fun maths revision pack to help KS2 beat the dreaded “summer brain drain” during the holidays

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Summer Holiday Maths activity 2: Logic Puzzle

Over the summer holidays, the seaside is the place to go! Make sure to take a bucket and spade, and this holiday Maths activity!

You can download this Maths investigation as a printable worksheet to send home with pupils over the holidays. But, as always, it’s also great for completing in the classroom.

Work out the missing total in the logic puzzle below:

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Summer Holiday Maths Activity 3: Theme Park Investigation

Another holiday must, the theme park maths investigation! Raucous, exciting, and sometimes scary – perfect for an exciting holiday Maths activity.

You can send pupils home with a printable version of this problem and some squared paper, or bring a theme park theme into classroom Maths investigations:

Your team has £600,000 to build your very own theme park! Your theme park must have rides, a car park, toilets, cafes, shops and paths.

Design your theme park on squared paper using the following information:

More on this topic…

Those are our top 3 summer holiday maths investigations for KS2. Find out about our other free summer holiday homework maths challenges for more attempts to defeat the summer brain drain. And there are 19 other end of term maths ideas here.

Don’t forget to download your free pack of all the worksheets required for these holiday themed maths investigations.

Check out 20+ more fun topical Maths investigations KS2 in our blog: 5 Ways to Use Topical Maths to Improve Problem Solving and Reasoning.

Here’s our complete list of topical maths investigations for year 5 and year 6.

Autumn Term maths investigations year 6 and year 5

Spring Term maths investigations year 6 and year 5

Summer term maths investigations year 6 and year 5

And if that’s not enough we’ve even got maths activities for Year 5 and Year 6 for events you’re likely to celebrate in primary school but don’t come round every year…

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