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.

 

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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