Let's cooking!

Have you ever thought about how fun is cooking with children? Cooking is a free-time activity that we can do at home or school if we have the suitable means. Children love cooking because it is a different activity in which they can discover and create. Furthermore, it can have several pedagogical purposes. In the field of nutrition, we can teach our students how is the process to cook the food that we eat and what are the nutrients and vitamins of each ingredient that we use. In this way, children will be aware of the importance of a healthy diet. But, what about Maths?

In the field of our subject, cooking has an essential role since it deals with lots of numbers, quantities and units of measurement. For this reason, in this post, we suggest an activity based on cooking following a recipe. We are going to prepare a sponge cake! This home-made cake is much healthier than any other processed baked goods that children usually eat, so it can be a great idea to take it for the afternoon snack.

The most important task for the students will be to prepare the ingredients. They will have to measure and weigh the different quantities. The ingredients that we need are:

The ingredients should be measured using different instruments. To weigh them, we can use a typical kitchen balance. For the liquids, there are different pans available to measure the capacity, though it can be interesting to use a meter jar because students can observe the units. There is also a possibility to measure the different ingredients using the yoghurt container as a unit of measurement. Moreover, if we want to make the activity more challenging, we can give the recipe to the children with the ingredients in different units of measurement (grams, kilos, etc.), so they will have to transform them into the same unit. 

Once all the ingredients have been mixed and we have the dough, it’s time to bake it in the oven. At this moment, our students will have to measure the time that it is necessary (35 minutes) and the temperature of the oven (180ºC).

Finally… we can taste our creation!