Markup & Discounts - Boo-tique: Three Weeks to Halloween

Boo-tique: Three Weeks to Halloween | Markup, Discount and Sales Tax Activity for Grade 7

Looking for a Halloween math activity that gives your students real percent practice instead of a coloring sheet? In Boo-tique, a family emergency calls Uncle Ray out of town and he hands the student the keys to his pop-up costume shop. They have three weeks to sell five costumes, set every price, fend off a rival store and pay Uncle Ray back for the stock. Whatever is left over is theirs.

Every number they calculate goes into the shop’s cash register, so students can see their markup and discount math turning into money they earned (or lost).

What students do

• Week 1, Pricing day: apply a different percent markup to each wholesale cost to set the shelf prices, then calculate the cash collected from the first week’s sales.
• Week 2, The rival: Spirit Mart opens across the mall with 20% off everything. Students match the discount, find the new sale prices and work out the profit on one item.
• Week 3, Halloween week: students choose a 25%, 30% or 35% discount using a shopper forecast, then calculate their sales at the discount they picked.
• November 1, Clearance: students mark the leftover stock 60% off, total all four sales periods, calculate 7% sales tax and find out whether they paid Uncle Ray back.

Why teachers like it

• Auto-graded: every answer is checked as students type, and you see progress and accuracy live on your teacher dashboard.
• Unique numbers for every student: wholesale costs and sales counts are randomized, so students can’t copy each other’s answers but can still help each other with the method.
• A real decision, not just drills: the Halloween-week discount is the student’s choice, and the worksheet checks their math whichever option they pick.
• Built-in “aha” moment: students find out for themselves that a 30% markup followed by a discount smaller than 30% can still lose money, because the markup and the discount are percents of different amounts.
• One continuous story: the student is the shop manager from start to finish, which keeps engagement high from the first price tag to the final tax bill.
• Student-facing intro slides: a short story deck sets up the scenario so students can start on their own, with no teacher presentation needed.
• Live shop dashboard: a register chart and stock tracker fill in as students complete each week.

Skills covered

• Percent markup and selling price
• Percent discount and sale price
• Sales tax on total sales
• Profit and loss per item
• Multi-step problems with money, rounded to the nearest cent
• Comparing trade-offs between price and quantity sold

Standards: CCSS 7.RP.A.3 (multistep ratio and percent problems: markups, markdowns, tax). It also supports 7.EE.B.3 (multi-step real-life problems with rational numbers).

Grade level: Grade 7, also works as a review for Grade 8 or for students who need extra percent practice.

Time: one class period.

Format: interactive digital worksheet on TeachRealMath, plus an intro slide deck.

Perfect for the last weeks of October, a Halloween math center, a sub-day activity or a hands-on review before a percent unit test.