Math Chat: Baking Up Fractions
As long as I can remember, I’ve always baked with my mom. Now, I won’t deny that the best part was getting dibs on that first warm cookie. But I also enjoyed the magic of the measuring cups, and the hum of her electric mixer that seemed to magically transform ordinary ingredients into something exciting. Baking together with your kid is a great way to teach life skills, but it’s also a very practical application of mathematics.
Every great activity needs a hook. In baking, it’s the ingredients and the tools. The part kids would like to not deal with is the recipe. Even though I’m a math teacher, I have to give a shout-out to science here. A recipe is the instructions for an edible science experiment. Not only do you get a treat at the end, but you also learn how to follow a procedure. If your child can read, encourage them to take charge of the recipe, including gathering the ingredients and tools.
Now comes my favorite part: measuring! Welcome to the world of fractions and units! In order to read the recipe, your kid will need to be fluent with numbers, particularly fractions and units. A teaspoon of baking soda will yield very different results than a cup of baking soda. So will misinterpreting ¾ of a cup as a ¼ cup. Explain that the bottom number (the denominator) tells you how many parts make up a whole, and the top number (the numerator) tells you how many parts you have. You just taught them that ¼ + ¼ + ¼ = ¾. Boom, you’re a fraction expert now!
If you’ve got some downtime while your recipe is baking, you can take it a step further! Use beans or another small item to show that four ¼ cups make one whole cup. Fill a ¼ cup with beans, and have your kid pour them into a glass measuring cup. Encourage them to guess: how many ¼ cups of beans will we need to get to 1 cup? The first time my kids did this experiment, they felt like they discovered pure magic.
Now let’s talk units! Baking uses measurement units like cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, and sometimes liters and even centimeters. Why do we need all these different units? Are they even related? (Hint: YES!)
While you’re experimenting with fractions, explore units too! How many tablespoons do you think are in a ¼ cup? A whole cup? You can also turn these questions into challenges. I don’t want to dirty another dish. Do you think we can use just our teaspoon to measure everything? Why or why not? In the classroom, units are often treated as an extension of fractions. But exploring these concepts together in a low-stress environment builds connections that you won’t typically find in a classroom.
In the end, your main course will be a delicious creation—with some hidden math skills on the side. Make sure to serve it with a healthy dose of encouragement. Your child did it! They made discoveries and tried something new! They’re a mathematician, or even a mathemagician, in the kitchen.
