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Simple & Compound Interest

At some point, people figure out that they can earn more money by opening an account at a bank than they can using a piggy bank under the bed. Interest in the money you earn from an investment or bank for allowing them to hold on your money for you.

Simple interest is the amount of money earned on a sum of money over a certain period of time at a particular interest rate. Compound interest is when you earn interest on the original money you deposit and also the interest you earn on it.

Beginner Level Math Class

We're going to explore working with percentages by working through example problems just like the ones in our workbook. We'll continue to practice with word problems and have fun learning!

Download your Percent #3 Workbook

To help you with your daily practice, I've put together a set of workbooks. You can use these or your own workbooks as long as it covers percent. Plan to complete 3-4 pages per day. After you complete the pages, you may check the answer key.

Percent Workbook #3: Part 2

I've put together a set of videos that will walk you through this workbook, so grab yours and let's work together. There are several videos that cover Workbook #3, and you'll find the first video in the previous session. Plan to complete 3-4 pages per day. After you complete the pages, you may check the answer key.

Math Activity: Simple Interest Notebook Activity

This is a quick reference guide to help you with the rest of the activities, projects, puzzles, games and projects below. You can do this first, or tackle the Percent Packet #6 first... either one is fine to start with. (There's another one of these for compound interest, but don't do that one until you've really got a handle on simple interest.)

Intermediate Level Math Class

Are you ready to really practice your new math skills? Let's get really good at ratios, percent, proportions, fractions & decimals so we can use them for anything we need to!

PLEASE NOTE: If you've never worked with interest calculations before, stick to simple interest. If you are already familiar with calculating simple interest, feel free to jump into the more advanced compound interest videos (near the bottom of the Intermediate section).

Math Activity: Percent Packet #6

This week, the Percent Packet focuses on Simple Interest, which is calculated by knowing how much you initially deposit, how long it stays at the bank, and what rate the bank is giving you to earn interest on that sum.

Simple interest is what it costs to borrow money without the interest also earning more interest. It keeps the overall interest payments lower. In real life, simple interest is used for car loans (the interest doesn't earn interest, but the car loan will be front-loaded so that your earlier payments pay more toward interest and less toward the principal).

Sometimes stores that have high-priced items, like appliances, offer simple interest loans for up to a year. They may offer a one-year loan for a $2,000 refrigerator at a rate of 8%, which means at the end of 12 months, you'll pay $2,160 ($160 is the interest on the $2,000) for that fridge, which breaks down into 12 payments of $180.

Let's learn how easy it is to calculate simple interest using this equation: I = p r t :

Math Puzzle: Simple Interest Triangle 

This is a fun way to practice calculating simple interest, and have a puzzle to solve as you go along! Make sure you've completed the Percent Packet #6 before you start!

Math Activity: Mad Lib Practice Problems

Do you giggle with funny stories that make no sense at all? This is a fun set of ten problems to practice your math skills and then have fun putting together the answers in a funny way.

Math Activity: Simple Interest, Percent Change, Discounts & Mark-ups Foldable Reference Sheet

If you're having trouble trying to remember what the calculations look like for simple interest, percent change, discounts, markups and more, use this simple foldable project tucked in your math journal so you can pull it out as a reference sheet when you need it!

Math Activity: Compound Interest Notebook Activity

Compound interest is when not only the principle earns interest, but also the interest that you earned on the principle earns interest! The calculations are a bit more complex, this is a borderline Advanced topic, so feel free to stop here and just work on the content above this one if you're still working on mastering simple interest.

Simple & Compound Interest Flipbooks Activity

This are quick-reference guides you can keep tucked in your math journal to pull out when you need it. The ones at the back of the download are blank so you can write in your own examples.

Simple & Compound Interest Maze

Let's practice both simple and compound interest calculations and get totally lost in a maze! The answer key has worked out solutions, so give it a try before watching the instructional video.

Advanced Level Math Class

This week, we will look at how you can increase your profits without working harder or spending more time on the business, but rather being smart about the decisions you are making about where to purchase your inventory or raw materials, marketing efforts, and more! Advanced students will focus on doing calculations as well as working on practical application of arithmetic, fractions, decimals and percent by diving into the world of Personal & Business FINANCE.

You'll need to have a firm grasp of all operations with fractions, decimals and percent (operations like adding, subtracting, multiplying dividing) as well as converting between fractions, decimals and percent in order to go through the content covered in the Advanced level.

Math Lab: Running your First Business

You're going to start a small business! Let's walk through this one step at a time, making sure you understand not only the big picture of what it takes to set up and run a business but also see how the math works in this process. This is a great lab to do with your parents together. Use the packet outlined in class for the four videos below.

Starting a Food Truck Business

We’re going to start our own FOOD TRUCK business! Let’s learn the business side of things to be sure we make good financial decisions before selling our first taco. We'll discover how to do the math calculations for our loan payment, how much we'll earn per hour, and make our way through lots of important decisions like location, loan selection, and what to sell in our truck.

Math Challenge

Each session, I have a special Math Challenge for you to work on after you work through some of the content in this area of math. The goal for these special math challenges is for you to be able to communicate your great ideas with your family and friends, without them being in a math class or having any knowledge of a specific area of math. You should be able to convey your great ideas to most people that are interested in hearing what you have to share. Many families find this part of the math program exciting for them to participate in with their student!

Solution to Percent Week #5 Math Challenge

You only need to draw ONE marble!

They key is that you already KNOW that all the labels are incorrect, so draw one from the “black-white” box.

Let’s say you draw a black marble, then you know that the other marble in the box must also be black otherwise the label would be correct.

Since you’ve now identified the box containing the two black marbles, you can at once tell the contents of the WW because you know it cannot contain two white marbles (again, because the label is incorrect), and it can’t be two black marbles (you’ve just identified the BB box), so it must be the BW box.

The third box must be the box holding two white marbles (WW)!

By the way, you still get this same result if you assume you drew a white marble from the BW box instead of black.