Thank you, mother and father, for all of those diapers (Updated)

Which is a better deal, cloth or disposable diapers?  How much did you cost your parents in diapers?  In the future, how much could your kid's diapers cost?  Help students realize all that mom and dad went through in buying and changing diapers. Students will compare the cost of buying disposable versus cloth diapers. They estimate how much they cost their parents in diapers and consider how much they will spend on diapers when they have a baby. This is a great math activity for Father’s Day or during the study of linear equations and introduction to systems of equations.

This activity has been updated to work two ways:

- Page 1 is open-ended. Hand out just the first page for students who are ready to make their own modelling decisions with minimal instruction. 
- The remaining pages give step-by-step questions that build tables, write equations, graph, and compare. Print all pages together for younger students or anyone who'd benefit from more scaffolding.  

📝Suitable for Grades 6-8
⏰45 minutes
 

💚The original activity was written and shared with us by Andy Fehlner, an 8th-grade algebra teacher in Newton, MA.