Disclaimer: I received The Ultimate Kids Cookbook by Tiffany Dahle in exchange for an impartial and unbiased review. The opinions are my own.
If you’ve been around MilKids Ed for a while, you know I like unique ways to mix math and pretty much anything else. Doing worksheets gets super boring after a while!
So it’s pretty awesome that The Ultimate Kids Cookbook by Tiffany Dahle arrived in my mailbox. It’s everything I love in a cookbook, plus it’s written with kids and parents in mind.
Genius!
Teach Math with Cooking & The Ultimate Kids’ Cookbook
My Big Girl is just starting K5, which is like Transitional Kindergarten or almostbutnotquite kindergarten. She’s starting to add and subtract, talking about halves and wholes.
And there’s a little early reading going on, too!
More and more she’s been wanting to help in the kitchen. But a lot of the recipes I’m making are complicated or require my constant attention.
They’re not really kid-friendly.
But every single recipe in The Ultimate Kids Cookbook is 100% kid-friendly!
As soon as I pulled our new cookbook out of the package, she noticed the kids (just like her) on the cover.
“Mommy, is this a cooking book for me?”
We spent tons of time pouring over every page, picking out our favorite must-try recipes. And that amounted to pretty much every single one in the book!
All the recipes are photographed beautifully. I can almost taste the fruity sweet goodness of those scones!
Teach Math with Cooking
Of course, being a teacher, my wheels started spinning. How could I connect cooking to math for an older preschooler?
Here are all the ways I thought of?
- Find all the number (any number that is there more than once) on the page, then add them all up
- Measure out an ingredient in tsp and then another in tbs, which is more?
- Count all the ingredients on the page
- Find the biggest number on the page, then find the smallest number
- Which is more: 4 cups or 1 quart? Use water to measure it out both ways and see
- How many ways can we cut up (cake, grilled cheese, bread, cookies, pancakes)?
- Cut your (finished recipe) into (triangles, squares, etc.)
- Measure out two ingredients, one liquid and one solid, that need the same amount for a recipe, then hold measured amount in each hand to see which feels heavier
- Whip the batter or eggs (number) of times, then try is a different number of times on the next attempt to see if it makes a taste difference
- Count down or set the timer to see when a recipe will be done
Older kids can learn math with cooking, too.
They can:
- Find equivalent fractions: 1/2 tsp = 2/4 tsp
- Double ingredients: 3/4 x2 =1.5cups
- Add fractions of measurements
- Convert between metric and standard measurements
- Use an analog clock to time their cooking
- Prepare a budget for a recipe or meal, then go shopping
- Plan out the schedule to execute a meal plan from prep to shopping to cooking to serving
It’s so much more fun to teach math with cooking. Plus, it’s a whole love yummier, too!
How do you make math more fun for your kids? Share your ideas in the comments!
Buy your copy of The Ultimate Kids’ Cookbook here: