Today you get two treats in one. Lucky you! I’m going to show you how to have math fun in the kitchen while also giving you a great recipe. I am a teacher turned stay-at-home mom. Most of my teaching years were actually spent as a private tutor. Working one on one with kids was fabulous, and I was able to build up my own business. Math fun in the kitchen was an activity I would plan for my students when we wanted to work on their math skills in a different, fun and engaging way. I’m going to show you an example of how I would work on math while also giving you my Mini Chip Snowball Cookies recipe.
If you have been around Meaningful Mama long, you know that having kids help in the kitchen is an activity I promote strongly. There is so much opportunity for learning, growth and togetherness in the kitchen. Learning comes naturally through baking and cooking, but I like to step it up a notch and continue teaching through this math fun in the kitchen experience.
We hit winter break, and we are half way through the school year. My daughter is working on multiplication and division. I know fractions are around the corner. We were encouraged to continue math practice over her winter break. We played a couple of my favorite multiplication games, and I did flash cards with her. This baking experience was another way for me to help supplement the work as she returned to school. We delivered the cookies we baked to the class, and they were a huge hit. This recipe is definitely one you will want to add to your repertoire.
I used Horizon Organic butter in this recipe. Horizon is passionate about creating special family experiences and togetherness. They challenged me to make learning and imagination come alive with use of their products.
Math Fun in the Kitchen
My kids love baking with me. I don’t know if it’s the promise of those spoonfuls of cookie dough or just because they love being around their mom…OK, I guess I really do know. It doesn’t take much to lure them into cookie making. This time I handed my daughter the recipe, and it didn’t look quite normal. All of the ingredients were listed as a math problem. Instead of 1 1/2 cups butter, it was 3 x 1/2 cup butter. Instead of 2 cups mini chocolate chips, it read 8/4 cups.
Transforming a recipe into math problems is rewarding for the kids. Once they figure out the amount, they get to dump the ingredients in the bowl. To be able to walk through some of the problems by having measuring cups there as a visual is very helpful and helps in comprehension. You can transform any recipe into a series of math problems, but I am going to offer up my delicious Mini Chip Snowball Cookies as an example. Here is a printable of the recipe card with the math problems (pictured above). Recipes are especially useful for working on fractions because they tend to have fractions already included. That said, you can always incorporate addition, subtraction, multiplication or division to go along with the level of your child. I made my snowball cookies into a printable recipe card in case you want to duplicate the work and recipe we did.
Mini Chip Snowball Cookies (Makes 50)
- 1 1/2 cup Horizon Organic Butter, softened
- 3/4 cup Powdered Sugar
- 1 Tbsp Vanilla
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 3 cups Flour
- 2 cups (12 oz) Mini Chocolate Chips
- Powdered Sugar for Dusting
- Beat butter, sugar, vanilla and salt until creamy.
- Beat in flour. Stir in morsels.
- Shape level Tbsp of dough into 1 1/4″ balls.
- Bake at 375 for 12-14 minutes until lightly brown.
- Sift powdered sugar over hot cookies.
- Store in an airtight container.
Not wanting to bake cookies with the kids? Maybe it’s a busier afternoon, but you still like this idea. Take something more instant, like Horizon Mac & Cheese. Have one of your kids help and tell them they need to boil 24/4 cups of water. After cooked, have them add 1 cup divided by 4 cups of Horizon Organic reduced fat milk. Finally have them stir in 16 divided by 8 Tbsp of Horizon Organic unsalted butter. It doesn’t have to be complicated to have math fun in the kitchen.
Learning doesn’t have to always look the same. Mixing it up and creating new experiences actually helps build pathways in the brain. Along with Horizon Organic, I want to encourage imagination and education this winter.
For more great ideas on how to creatively incorporate Horizon products, please follow them on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Horizon Organic. The opinions and text are all mine.
