The kitchen is a wonderful place to teach hands-on, real-life Math concepts. One tasty benefit of practicing math in the kitchen is that you get to enjoy the fruit of your labor! Measuring flour, butter, sugar, chocolate chips, etc. into a bowl, mixing, baking, and then . . . eating delicious chocolate chip cookies is a lot more fun than completing yet another worksheet, don’t you think? Worksheets have their place, of course; but I like to do as many hands-on Math activities as possible. The children will usually jump at the chance to “help” you in kitchen much more often than they will be eager to sit down and work yet another page of Math problems.
For young children, a plastic dishpan containing some water or rice and a set of measuring cups and spoons will provide hours of entertainment and learning. Kitchen scales are fun for this age, too.
Fractions are easily grasped when a pie or pizza needs to be divided into equal slices!
Following a recipe written in metric measurements is a good way to get some hands-on practice with the Metric system. There are online conversion calculators that can be used to convert a favorite family recipe to metric measurements if you’d like to do that.
For the older students, the grocery budget, menu plan, and shopping list can be excellent teaching tools. Let your children help you with the menu plan and shopping while sticking to the grocery budget, and they will gain some excellent life-skills training; and they just might begin to understand why you don’t allow them to buy all of the “extras” they ask for at the grocery store! Allowing them to take lead with the shopping list, calculator, and handling the money when you do the shopping can be a good learning experience.
I hope some of these ideas inspire you to cook up a little Kitchen Math with your family this week! There are countless ways to apply Math concepts in the kitchen, just use your imagination and I know you will discover lots of tasty math just waiting to happen.
Blessings,
Catherine
Catherine Love lives in the heart of Texas with her husband Carl, and their 3 daughters, Sarah, Hannah, and Cana. They enjoy cooking, gardening, and learning new things together as they pursue a lifestyle of learning. You can read Catherine's Kitchen Adventures and more on her blog- Seeds of Love.
