Playing With Math: 
Forty Four Ideas for Mixing Food and Math (and Science)

"A good education for every child does not mean the same education for every child.  "

Please use what works for you and your child and ignore the rest.  Every child is different.  If this information does not seem to be a good fit for your particular child, then keep looking and experimenting until you find what works.

This Web Page by Pauline Harding for Art Nurk.
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• Geometry – shapes – spherical oranges, circles of salami, squares of cheese, cubes of cheese
• Arranging patterns on the plate- alternating tomatoes and onions on a platter for a party
• Using cookie cutters to make shapes – which shapes tessellate?
• Counting everything –jellybeans, carrots, forks, peas
• Sorting and counting a bag of M&M’s – how many browns? How many oranges? Make a graph. Now subtract!
• Grouping by twos or five or tens – each person gets two cookies – how many do we have? Do we have enough?
• Putting out a fork for each person, a spoon for each plate.
• Buying snacks at the pool. How much money do we have? How much do things cost? How can we get something for each person? What about the change?
• How long until dinner? How will we know? What does the clock say?
• Measuring cups and spoons. How many half cups in a cup? How many quarter cups?
• Weight. A pound of pasta, a pound of butter, five pounds of flour, an ounce of cheese.
• Adding an extra person for dinner. How many plates? How many kids? How many adults? How many in all?
• Subtraction of cookies.
• Making patterns on Christmas cookies.
• Making a food pyramid chart, a chore chart, a what’s for dinner chart.
• Surveying the family – rice or potatoes? Tallying the vote.
• What does a hundred look like? A hundred cheerios, jellybeans, chocolate chips. How many more make a thousand?
• How many chocolate chips in each cookie? How many in the whole batch?
• Measuring the temperature of the candy or fudge.
• Estimating which container has the capacity for the leftovers.
• Dropping food coloring into glasses of water. Ratio of red to yellow when making orange.
• Does this cup hold more or less water? What if we use a shorter, fatter cup?
• If four people eat one slice of a pizza cut into eighths, how much pizza is left?
• How can we make twice as many cookies in one batch?
• Who gets the first pancake?  Who gets the second? Third?
• Estimating how many beans in the jar.  Were you right? Count and see!
• Reading stories about food. Reading recipes.  Following the directions on the cake mix box.
• How many pieces do we need from this rectangular cake?  What are the different ways we can cut it?
• If the muffin pan has four cups in one direction and three in the other, how many muffins can we make?
• How many pieces of pizza do you think the people at our party will eat?
• Decorating round cakes using radial symmetry.
• Using toothpicks in marshmallows to make geometric models.
• Sculpting bread dough.
• Dividing the cookies among the number of kids present. Deciding what to do with the remainder.
• Half of the jellybeans is how many? How many is one third?
• Cooking with metric units.
• Throwing eggs out the window wrapped in straws and Popsicle sticks and tape. Do they break?
• Saving seeds from apples and melons and tomatoes. Sorting them. Planting them – how high do they grow? Make a chart.
• Cut a stalk of celery in half at the bottom. Put each end in water with food coloring. What happens to the leaves?
• Shake the can of mixed nuts. Now open it.  Where are the big nuts?  Where are the small ones?  Why?
• How much sugar is in this cereal?  How much fiber? What about that one?  Which costs more?  Why?
• Sorting cans and boxes in the cabinets. How do they fit together? Which one is taller? Cylinders and rectangular solids.
• Properties of matter: solids, liquids, gasses. Ice, water, steam.
• How hot is the oven? How cold is the freezer? How do we know? How does it work?