A Three Bears Kinda' Morning

My girls love cooking so whenever possible I try to incorporate it into our lessons. With cooking, math problems are meaningful. Here's how cooking (and math) was incorporated into our fairy tale unit.

Three Bears' Breakfast - Math and Cooking Activity

We read Goldilocks (an English and Spanish version), so naturally my kids requested we make porridge for breakfast. My younger daughter also made sure to ask "Can we take a walk to let it cool off?"

First, I showed the girls the servings chart on the back of a Quaker Oats container. I explained, in order for there to be enough oatmeal for all of us, we need to convert this recipe for four servings. Using the actual measurements on the container, I created a chart for them to fill out.

For KDO I filled in the "1 serving" column.
Note: She decided she didn't want salt.

I told her each person gets one cup of milk and half of a cup of oats. So, if it says "2 servings," she needs to draw the cup and half cup twice; and so on. Then she filled in the rest of the columns. We've done this before, so she is already figuring out that she can draw a full cup instead of two half-cups or vice versa.

Here's her chart:

For my 10 year old, I told her to use the information from the "2 servings" column on the container to figure out the measurements for 3 and 4 servings.

Using their charts and cooking instructions on the oats container, we made breakfast.

Once the oatmeal was cooked, just like Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear... we took a walk outside while our porridge cooled off. On our short walk we collected flowers for future art projects: mini flower still life, and pressed flower collages.

This post is part of a fairy tale thematic series; make sure to check out all the posts related to this unit.