Time in the kitchen together is a wonderful way to make family memories while you’re making a meal, but it’s also a great way to practice math concepts with your child. Check out a baker’s dozen of ways to have fun with kitchen math!
Share real-life math situations. Encouraging students to think about math in a real-life context makes math more meaningful. Cooking helps develop problem-solving skills and makes connections between school and home.
Estimation. Look through the grocery store flyer to make a grocery list. Have your student estimate how much your bill will be before you go to the store. Allow the student to examine the receipt to see how close their estimate was to the actual amount.
Counting and sorting. Do you need four potatoes and six eggs to make potato salad? Have your child find, count, and sort the needed items to prepare to cook. Tips for preschool children include counting ingredients one by one and comparing piles of ingredients for size and number, plus some easy-to-make recipes. For young children, kitchen math can help support number sense, the idea that numbers have meaning.
Measuring and fractions. Finding and filling measuring cups will develop basic understanding of fractional sizes. As your child becomes more comfortable with working with fractions in the kitchen, you can have him or her double or half ingredients to change the portions. (Here’s a video lesson on conversion factor in the kitchen, and more about kitchen math and measurement from “Twice as Good,” a PBS cooking show by kids and for kids.)
Shapes. Help younger children identify 2D and 3D shapes with common kitchen items. Students can identify the shapes of food items such as spherical grapes and square crackers or cooking tools such as rectangular cookie sheets or round cake pans.
Patterns. Making kabobs or a pie that requires a pattern? Have your students help create or identify the patterns in the food. Your child also can separate “finger” fruit and veggies (grapes, berries, chunks of apple and pineapple, baby carrots, chunks of pepper, broccoli florets, slices of squash, etc.) into color groups and make a pattern or “picture,” before eating their snack!
Making predictions (reasoning). Strike up a guessing game to build your child’s critical-thinking skills. How long do they think the chicken legs will need to cook? Would it take more time to cook a whole chicken? See if their predictions get better with experience.
Time. What time is it now? If our dish needs to cook for 45 minutes, what time will we need to take it out of the oven? Have your child help determine the end time for a recipe, then have him or her watch the clock instead of setting a kitchen timer. (These short “CyberChase” video from PBS will help explain the math concepts of time remaining and elapsed time.)
Comparing sizes. Teach your little one to compare the sizes of similar items, such as cereal boxes, milk cartons, and yogurt containers. Which one is biggest? Which is smallest? Is the milk carton bigger than the yogurt container?
Units of measurement. Have students look at the units of measurement in the kitchen. What unit is milk measured in? What about a bottle of juice? Baking soda? Yogurt? Talk about the differences in the units and compare the sizes. Students need familiarity in both metric and customary (imperial or English) units.
Convert units. Can’t find the 1 cup measuring cup? Have your child help you figure out how many smaller units it will take to make the larger unit.
Computation. Have your student look at nutrition labels, including serving size and calories. Have your child determine the number of calories for multiple servings. Here are more math activities using information on labels.
Bonus: For older kids with an interest in cooking, this episode of Math at Work shows how math meets culinary arts. A chef and restaurant owner explains the importance of math in the kitchen and the office for her business. And, a culinary school emphasizes the importance of math and science for budding chefs.
We’ll be sharing more tips so watch for the next installment of DLD Daily Dozen!