Kitchen Math – How Cooking and Meal Time Can Develop Your Child’s Math and Measuring Skills

Ready to do some kitchen math and measuring with your kids? Read on to get some practical tips and find out why getting children learning in the kitchen is something every parent should be doing. 

Puddles of milk. Flour covered surfaces. Sticky egg dripping from little fingers. Embark on a cookery session with your child and the kitchen will definitely be messier than when you started.

Nevertheless, there are too many incredible benefits to cooking with kids to let that stop you!

Developing life skills tops the list. Your kids won’t be leaving home barely able to boil an egg. Instead, they’ll know their way around a kitchen and be able to rustle up at least a few tasty, nutritious meals.

Plus, being trusted to chop up fruit, carry a pitcher of juice to the table, or cook a three-course meal (we can only dream!) gives kids a “can do” attitude that transcends the kitchen.

Cooking as a family also provides some quality, screen-free time together. And, if they’ve had a hand in creating it, you may even persuade a picky eater to try something new.

Spending time together in the kitchen can give kids a boost with their schoolwork too. Cooking provides opportunities to work on literacy, science, and – the focus of this article – kitchen math and measuring.

Here’s why incorporating math into a cookery session is so beneficial for your child (and lots of fun too!).

How kitchen math and measuring can benefit your child

It teaches lots of essential math skills

Whatever grade your kids are in, there’s a math concept they can work on in the kitchen.

Counting, addition, subtraction, pattern, shape, time, fractions, unit conversions – cooking teaches so many of the math essentials your kids will be covering in school.

It provides hands-on learning that they’ll remember

Unfortunately for parents, the messier, and more hands-on an activity, the more kids seem to get out of it. And the easier a new concept seems to stick.

Young children in particular learn best when they’re using their senses. Being able to touch, see, smell, listen, and taste during the process of cooking helps to bring math to life. It makes abstract concepts feel more concrete, meaningful, and memorable.

It’s a fun and creative way to do math

Got a kid who groans every time you ask about their math homework? Cooking provides an alternative approach to the subject, full of fun and creativity.

Most kids love a good baking session – the process, the mess, and getting to eat tasty treats straight out of the oven!

When they’re getting so much enjoyment out of being in the kitchen, they may even enjoy learning a little kitchen math measuring along the way too.

Ways to use cooking and meal time to develop your child’s math skills

Go shopping

If you want to maximize the amount of kitchen math and measuring skills you’re working on, involve kids in the whole process. Make a list together and take them shopping for ingredients.

Kids will have to look at the weights of products in order to find exactly what they need. This might involve converting cups to ounces or vice versa. And it will help to reinforce concepts of volume and weight.

You can also use this trip as an opportunity to calculate prices. Get kids to work to a budget, looking at the price per unit of measurement to save money.

Measure ingredients

Are you a cook who works by instinct? Or one who weighs everything to the ounce? Introduce both approaches to your child. They’ll get to understand the difference between estimating and exact measurements.

When it comes to measuring, younger kids will find using a set of scales, recognizing large numbers, and discovering standard units of measurement a task in itself.

For older kids, you can step things up. Get them to develop their application of fractions by halving or doubling a baking recipe.

Make cookies

Something as simple as cutting out cookies can have an educational value!

Very young children love playing around with cookie dough. And geometric cutters help them to recognize and name common shapes. You can work together to recognize straight and curved sides, and the number of edges and corners too.

It’s also easy to incorporate basic arithmetic, counting the number of cookies you have created. “We need 10 and there are seven cookies on the baking tray. How many more do we need?”

Set a timer

Knowing how long food needs to be stirred, kneaded, or cooked will help kids to develop a real-life sense of time.

Get them to count – forwards or backward – as you stir a pot for 10 seconds. Or ask them to set a timer as you put a roasting tin into the oven.

They’ll become more familiar with hours, minutes, and seconds as a result. Plus they’ll become more adept at adding and subtracting time too.

Set the table

Nearly time to sit down to dinner! Task kids with counting out the correct number of plates, glasses, and items of cutlery in order to set the table for the family.

You could get them to match a side of the table that you have already set, developing their skills in pattern and symmetry. (Making sequenced fruit kebabs or a symmetrically topped pizza gives practice in these areas too!)

You could even get them to fill a glass of water for everybody. Using a measuring cup to pour, they’ll get to see how the same volume of water looks different in glasses of different sizes and shapes.

Finally…clean up!

Spoiler alert: this step doesn’t actually help your kids with kitchen math and measuring skills! However, successfully getting everyone to pitch in with a clean-up operation will make you much more likely to attempt cooking with your kids again!

Support your kids’ kitchen-based math study with interesting and engaging math worksheets from the KidsKonnect library. Covering essential math learning for a wide range of ages, you’re sure to find exactly the right worksheets for your child’s math level.