The Easy Way to Create Christmas-Themed Lessons

As the Christmas season comes into view, many parents will naturally want to incorporate elements of Christmas into their children’s education.

Prior to the advent of artificial intelligence, doing so was not always easy. Parents could easily spend lots of time and energy wrangling together a solution that was educational, interesting, and instilled the values they wanted to give to their children.

Now thanks to AI, though, coming up with a quality Christmas-themed lesson is something that can often take just a few minutes. Let’s walk through a few examples to illustrate.

Suppose you are a parent of a teenager, and you are following a curriculum in which they are learning pre-calculus. You thus want to give them pre-calculus level word problems to help them get their daily math practice in.

But since we’re in the most wonderful time of the year, it’d be nice if those word problems were Christmas-themed. This might also make the exercise more fun and less monotonous for your student, and might create unique opportunities for you to imbue the values you want to instill within the math exercises.

With this context in mind, I went to one of my preferred AI solutions, Claude. For a lot of math and technology related education, I think Claude does an excellent job. Here is what I asked Claude:

Create a word problem for a pre-calculus student that incorporates secular themes of Christmas.

This is a very simple prompt, but it gets the job done. Here is what Claude came up with:

Problem: A popular singing Santa decoration goes viral on social media on December 1st. That morning, 15 people had purchased the decoration at the local mall. Each person shows the decoration to an average of 3 friends per day, and roughly 40% of people who see it end up buying one the next day. Assuming this growth pattern continues:

a) Write an equation to model the number of new decorations purchased on day n
b) How many new decorations would be purchased on December 5th?
c) In theory, how many total decorations would be sold by December 10th?
d) Explain why this mathematical model would eventually break down in real life.”

Claude also provided the solution:

Solution walkthrough:

1. This is an exponential growth problem where:
   • Initial value = 15
   • Each person shows 3 others
   • 40% conversion rate = 0.4
   • Daily multiplier = 3 × 0.4 = 1.2
2. For part a:
   • New purchases on day n = 15(1.2)^(n-1)
3. For December 5th (n=5):
   • 15(1.2)^4 ≈ 31.1 ≈ 31 decorations
4. Total by December 10th:
   • Sum of 15(1.2)^n from n=0 to n=9
   • ≈ 270 decorations
5. Real-world limitations:
   • Limited store inventory
   • Market saturation
   • People showing to same friends
   • Declining interest over time

You could repeat this prompt to generate a new question, or simply modify your prompt by asking Claude to provide you with however many questions and solutions you want. Print out the questions, give them to your student, and your good to go!

That was a secular example, but of course one can easily make a faith-based example as well. Here is a simple prompt I tried:

Create a word problem for a pre-calculus student that incorporates elements of the story of Jesus’ birth from the Bible.

Here is Claude’s reply:

Christmas-themed Biblical Pre-Calculus Problem

According to the Gospel of Luke, Mary and Joseph traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census. Historical sources suggest travelers in ancient Judea typically covered between 15-20 miles per day on foot. The most direct route between Nazareth and Bethlehem was approximately 80 miles, but they likely took a longer route of about 90 miles to avoid Samaria.

Assume Mary and Joseph:

• Traveled an average of r miles per day
• Made brief stops every s hours of travel
• Rested for h hours during each stop
• Traveled for 8 hours each day when moving

a) Write an equation for the total time T (in days) to complete the journey in terms of r, s, and h.

b) If they stopped every 2 hours (s=2) for 30-minute rests (h=0.5) and completed the journey in 6 days, what was their average speed r in miles per day?

c) If a group of shepherds 5 miles from Bethlehem were visited by angels announcing Jesus’ birth, and they “hurried” to find him at an average speed of 4 miles per hour, how long did it take them to reach the manger?

That’s a challenging problem! Fortunately, Claude can also provide a solution to help you and your student check to see if you’re on the right track.

Solution

a) First, let’s create an equation for total time T in days:

1. In each 8-hour travel day:
   • Number of stops = 8/s
   • Total rest time per day = (8/s) × h hours
   • Actual moving time per day = 8 – (8h/s) hours
2. Since rate × time = distance, we can write:
   • 90 = r × T × (8 – 8h/s)/8
   • Simplifying: T = 90/(r × (1 – h/s))

b) Given s=2, h=0.5, and T=6:

1. Plug into our equation:
   • 6 = 90/(r × (1 – 0.5/2))
   • 6 = 90/(r × (1 – 0.25))
   • 6 = 90/(r × 0.75)
   • 6r × 0.75 = 90
   • r = 90/(6 × 0.75)
   • r = 20 miles per day

c) For the shepherds’ journey:

1. Distance = 5 miles
2. Rate = 4 miles per hour
3. Time = Distance/Rate
   • Time = 5/4 = 1.25 hours
   • Converting to hours and minutes:
   • 1.25 hours = 1 hour and (0.25 × 60) = 1 hour and 15 minutes

Therefore:

• The average travel speed was 20 miles per day
• The shepherds would have reached the manger in 1 hour and 15 minutes

This solution demonstrates that:

1. Mary and Joseph’s calculated speed (20 miles/day) falls within the historical range given (15-20 miles/day)
2. The math accounts for rest periods and actual moving time
3. The shepherd’s journey involved a simpler rate × time = distance calculation

As always with today’s artificial intelligence, human oversight is both essential and valuable. Oversight is necessary because you’ll still need to at least spot check its output; it can yield errors, especially if given a complex or obtuse request. It is also critical to note that the most output from artificial intelligence emerges when it is coupled with human expertise. For example, in the case of making a theologically-inspired math problem, AI systems will perform much better if they are given insightful, detailed requests that only a theological expert could provide.

Merry Christmas, and have fun creating Christmas-themed educational lessons!

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