Buy large paper maps of the United States, spread them out onto the floor and put a die in a plastic cup. Put a blindfold around one student's eyes and have her roll the die onto the map. Write down the name of the city the die lands on and repeat this process until the die lands on three cities. Have the student look up the current temperature in each city and ask her to convert the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius. For each correct answer, she gets a small prize such as a sticker or candy. For each incorrect answer, she rolls again to get another city. Each child in the class should get an opportunity to participate in this exercise. If you have a large class, splitting the kids into small groups would make this exercise more enjoyable and less time consuming
Pull random trivia questions off the Internet, ensuring that you have some questions your students will most likely know the answers to and others that they will have no clue about. Write the questions on index cards, fold them in half and drop them in a fishbowl. Have your students answer 10 questions at a time, keeping track of how many questions they get right. Ask the kids to turn their correct answers into a fraction, decimal and percent. Eight out of 10 correct would be 8/10 in fraction form, .8 in decimal form and 80 percent in percent form.
Give your students tape measures and ask them to measure several classroom items in inches. They might measure the desk, blackboard or the length of their locker. Have them convert the measurements to centimeters and write the measurements and item names on index cards. The kids can quiz one another about which classroom items are a certain length in inches or centimeters. Ask the children whether it was easier to guess items by inches or centimeters and talk about how math concepts often become easier with familiarity and practice.
Ask your students to use the trip odometer on their parents' car to learn about converting miles to kilometers. The next time their families go out to do errands, the students can keep track of how many miles are covered driving from place to place. Students who use the bus or walk can measure the distance using a map or pedometer. At the end of the day, each student can convert the miles to kilometers and outline them on a map listing both measurements. The completed map is brought to school, where they can take turns sharing about their day in front of the class.