Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Fractions While Baking

Apparently Alice has decided she wants to help me by Vlogging about things she's learned.  So here are a few moments from our kitchen spliced together about fractions.  This was just before we made our "Star Spangled Pie".

You can see how we experimented with quarters, and halves.  This is after years of baking together and having her do the measuring so she was fairly familiar with the vocabulary already when we started this.  I had never had her explore the relationship between the different measuring cups before today though so this really is her first introduction to fractions in terms of what they are and mean.  She had to do the quarters part a couple of times - hence the splicing together (you probably don't really want to watch all the gobbly gook in between).  I pointed out to her that one quarter was written with a 1 over a 4 and explained that meant that four quarters would come together to make one whole cup.  Then, it was just a matter of testing out whether or not mommy was right.  I also explained that if we divided a candy bar every one would want even parts and a fraction is just splitting something evenly.  I then gave her the cup for 1/3 and asked her what she thought of that.  She figured out (through testing it) that it worked the same way and that three thirds fit into the 1 cup measuring cup.  The part on the video about halves we had not done yet when she told me to "hit rec" so she was able to make the leap from quarters and thirds all on her own to the halves.

This is only one reason, I seriously recommend spending time together in the kitchen.  For more examples of things kids can learn in the kitchen, check out this blarticle, Food Math.  They'll learn a ton.

If you are having trouble seeing the video by clicking on the image, you can also try it on Youtube, by clicking on this Link.




No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for your comments!