How To Teach Children Maths Through Baking

We all know baking is a super fun activity that you and your children can enjoy together on any day of the week.

Not only are cooking and baking great ways to spend an afternoon, but they can also teach your children a variety of life skills that will stay with them for years to come.

Whether it be learning how to handle sharp objects, make shapes, blend flavours or follow step-by-step recipes, the list of things your children can learn from baking is endless.

By maintaining a focus on one particular skill while baking with your children, you can magnify the lessons they learn as you spend time together making something delicious.

Here are a few things to think about when trying to teach your children mathematical skills through baking:

Linear Measurement

Baking can incorporate the use of millilitres, grams, cups and other ways to measure both solids and liquids.

By firstly teaching your children the differences between how various substances are measured, you can create the foundation to move on to more advanced quantities.

Teach them the difference in textures, solids, liquids and gasses and move onto explain other types of measurements such as millimetres, centimetres and meters – depending on your child’s age and ability.

Once they have grasped the smaller measurements, this knowledge can then easily be applied to equations, requiring your child to work out – for example – how many millilitres are in two litres or how many grams they need for half a kilogram of flour.

Shapes, Fractions & Division

For your younger children, simple lessons in shapes can be taught from both round and square cakes.

For example, you could ask your child to cut out a triangle shape, diamond or even a hexagon from a slab of traybake, then reward them with the biggest bite for any correct answers they give!

Lessons for your older children could include using fractions to divide cakes into sections, or asking them to decorate quarters of it with a particularly coloured icing.

Again, depending on their level of knowledge in fractions, you could make this task as easy or as advanced as you like.

Using Scenarios

When teaching children maths skills through baking, try to frame your lessons by using scenarios.

While it’s good to challenge your children’s arithmetic skills, by throwing in a real-world scenario, this will provide them with a better understanding of how these skills apply to later life.

For example: dad would like two slices of this cake. Of the remaining cake, split between me, you, and your sister, how many equal slices will we each have?

Using scenarios is a fantastic way to teach your child to think independently and apply their understanding of real-life mathematical problems.

For further advice on teaching your kids maths while baking, please feel free to reach out to us at Cakes By Robin. Alternatively, if you’re simply looking for a few fool proof ways to keep your kids entertained at
home, take a look at some of our videos: