Baking & Fractions

 

I have been waiting and waiting to make rhubarb torte and finally had the chance!  I love how it turned out and so does my family.  Baking involves a lot of math, especially if you are going to double or half your recipe.   My daughter loves to bake with me and I enjoy teaching her all of my mom’s old recipes. 

Rhubarb Torte

Crust:

½ cup Softened Butter

½ cup Margarine

2 cups Flour

2 TBSP Sugar

Mix together and press into a 9x13 pan.

Filling:

5 cups Chopped Rhubarb – spread evenly over crust

6 Egg Yolks

2 cups Sugar

2 cup Cream

4 TBSP Flour (I would use a little more; otherwise it could be a little runny.)

½ TSP Salt

Mix the above 5 ingredients and pour over rhubarb.  Bake @ 350˚ for 40-45 minutes until set.

Meringue:

6 Egg Whites

Beat until stiff.

Gradually add:

1 cup Sugar
¼ TSP Salt
¼ TSP Cream of Tartar

Spread over baked torte, form peaks with back of spoon, and bake at 325˚ until golden brown.

Cool before eating!  ENJOY!

This recipe is not a good one to double or half, but some great recipes to do this with are cookies, bars, and pancakes.  Kids love to help out in the kitchen and what a great way to have a learning experience and spend time with your children.

Fractions can be tricky; here are some conversions for baking and cooking:

 From:

www.shelovesmath.com  ~ This is also a great site for reviewing fractions

 

 

From:

www.glutenfreeveganlove.com

 

I hope you are able to do some baking with your kids and teach them about fractions at the same time. ~ Shelly

 

Baseball & Numbers

 

Baseball is a game of numbers.  I’ve had the privilege to learn this through many years of my husband’s coaching and my boys playing.  I recently was introduced to a system that my husband uses called the Team Process Index (TPI).  The TPI is a way to take the focus off of the negatives of baseball and place it on the point system of the TPI.  There are three parts to the TPI where players and the team can earn points and when the teams scores 48+ points on this system they should bring home the big “W.”

Here is how it works and how being good with numbers matters in life once again. 

The three sections that points can be earned are Freebies, Base2, and QAB’s.  For example under the Freebies, if a team has 4 errors and their opponent has 3 errors the difference is -1.  Below I have attached a blank TPI, blank information sheet, and completed sheet.

  

 

What this does for a player is puts his focus on how he can score points for his team by having a great hard hit line drive and not on the fact that he just got out.  What it also does is incorporates math into their baseball lives.  They need to be able to add and subtract with positive and negative numbers.  This could be taught on a number line, which is easily added to the bottom of the form if needed.

The use of a number line in math, when adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers, gives students something tangible to look at.  For example looking at the errors on the sheet above, we had 2 and our opponent had 7, giving us +5 points.  Where if we would have had 7 and our opponent had 2, we would have had -5 points, which could be confusing for kids.

Again, math is so important to our everyday lives, that I hope by giving our students examples of how we use math outside the classroom they will realize its importance.

Please feel free to pass this on to any of the baseball coaches in your life and have a great time at the ballpark this summer vacation. ~ Shelly

Value of a $ Dollar $

Seriously if I had a dollar for every time my kids, or even my husband for that matter, asked me for money, I would be one rich momma!  This weekend we are at Little League Districts and of course we need to wash some gear in the hotel.  My husband decided he would take on the task.  Thank goodness!  Right?  Well, my daughter also decided she would tag along with him.  Since my husband is a teacher, he decided he would teach Alyana a little bit about money.  Here are a few questions he asked her:

How many quarters are in a dollar?
Her response was of course, “I don’t know.”  She does now by the way.

How many dollars is it to wash clothes?

Her response once he pointed it out on the machine was, “$2.”

How many quarters total to wash?
And again of course her response was, “I don’t know.”

Now keep in mind, Alyana is 5 years old and is going to start kindergarten this year, so this was a big deal for her to understand.  Starting small with kids is important.  If we throw too much information at them at once, they will not comprehend it all.  We have since been bringing this experience up and going over  it and over it.  Repetition is also huge with kids.  This is one of the easiest ways for them to learn.

When we get home, I am going to do a really fun project with her about money.  We are going to wash a bunch of coins and sort them out.  Then I am going to have her count out how many of each coin and chart it on this chart. 

 

Also, when she is ready to move on in her learning of money we can use this chart .  I found it at Spraklebox.

 

Published on

Teaching children the value of a dollar early in life will hopefully set them on the right path for success. ~ Shelly

Divide & Conquer

Divide and conquer was our motto this past weekend when we took a family camping trip to southern Minnesota.  If you have ever been camping you know that it can be lots of work, but tons of fun.  We had our family of 5 (2 adults and 3 kids) and our friends, who are a family of 4 (2 adults and 2 kids) in a camper and tent.  The adults were of course in the air conditioned camper and kids were all in the tent.  Many great meals were had, water balloons thrown, s'mores eaten, new friends made, and money spent.  This brings up a few mathematical opportunities.

  

Cinnamon Rolls On A Stick ~ Epic Fail

I don’t know about you, but I am always curious how much we actually spend total on vacation.  Here are totals for food, camping, gas, and extras: 

·         Camper Site                             $285.36

·         Tent Site                                  $203.34

·         Food                                          $227.44

·         Gas                                            $500.00

·         Extras (Treats, Golf, etc.)       $300.00      
    Total                                      $1516.14  

Division plays a big role in our everyday lives when trying to figure out the cost of items; whether they are on sale at a certain discount, figuring out how much someone owes you for something, or how long something will take.   Now let’s see how much this trip was per person and per family.

Take the total divided by the number of people.  Then take the cost per person and multiply it by the number of members for each family. 

$1516.14 ÷ 9 = $168.46 Per Person

$168.46 × 4 = $673.84 Friend’s Family

$168.46 × 5 = $842.30 Our Family

There are different ways to teach this to your students; from long division, short division, and estimation through rounding.  Here is a video to take a quick look at regarding long division. 



Now go out and "Divide and Conquer!" ~ Shelly
 

 

One Drop at a Time!

Individually we are one drop, but together we are an ocean.  In my last post I discussed our sandbagging efforts, today I would like to add to that.  Over the past week our small community has come together to form an ocean.  People from all walks of life and all ages joined together to support one another.  Even the National Guard joined in the efforts to help build sandbag walls to keep the rising waters out of homes, roads, and businesses.

Why do I mention this in a math blog you ask?  Cooperative learning, that’s why.  There are many ways that students learn, but I feel that one important tool is to use cooperative learning by teaching math as a social activity.  Getting your students engaged in math early and allowing them to work with others to come to a consensus on an equation or problem, makes learning math fun.  If you get a chance, watch this video of a teacher who believes in using math as a social activity.  He has some really great ideas, especially one called the "fishbowl". 

 

 

The "fishbowl" is an awesome way to pull kids out of their comfort zone and get them to join in the learning efforts of the class.  For those that are shy and don’t normally share or answer questions this is a great opportunity to get them the experience of talking in front of a group.  Also, as a student in the audience watching the group work together and communicate, this a great way for those students to learn how others communicate and work together.

 

 

Cooperative learning can be a great tool to use in your classroom.  Give it a shot and see what you think.

Sandbags & More Sandbags

Lots of Manual Labor

Sandbags, sandbags, and more sandbags were all I saw for six hours today.  Our sandbagging efforts started at a house on the lake that needed a wall built to use as a break from the waves.  Once we were totally out of bags we were off to fill more bags with sand.  We filled each sandbag with 4 scoops of sand and each pallet had 20 sandbags on top.  Math is used in our everyday life activities without us even realizing it.  Students will always say, “How and when will I ever use this anyway?”  Well doing the math today, let’s just say we loaded 25 pallets.  How would we come to the total number of sandbags completed?  How would we figure out how many scoops of sand was used? 



Sandbag Machine AKA "Sand Spider" ~ Sandbagging went much faster once this machine arrived.

 

Although this problem may be simple, there are a number of ways we could teach our students to solve this problem.  First we know this:  there are 4 scoops of sand per bag, 20 bags per pallet, and 25 pallets.  Second we know that we need to decide what process we are going to use to solve.  Third write out the equation and find the answer.

Step 1 – 4 scoops/bag, 20 bags/pallet, 25 pallets

Step 2 – We could use the multiplication tree model, a set model, and/or array model.  For today I think I will choose the array model to demonstrate this problem.

20 Sandbags/Column                                                                                                     25 Pallets/Row

Step 3 –

20 sandbags per pallet x 25 pallets = ?

20 x 25 = 500 Sandbags

Now we need to take 500 sandbags and figure out how many scoops of sand we did.  To do this we can use the same idea, but remember the process and go from there.

4 scoops per bag x 500 bags = ?

4 x 500 = 2,000 scoops of sand

In the beginning, it did not seem like we did a lot of work.  When you stop and do the math you realize that 2,000 scoops of sand is a big workout and when you get a lot of people together doing this, one or two more people make a world of difference.  So when a student asks, “How will I use this in the real world,” you can help them think of ways that math is used in their everyday activities.

"The Great Sandbag Wall"

Good Luck & Enjoy Teaching

Shelly