Here are five fun ways to turn your kitchen into a cookie measuring paradise. You’ll have so much fun, everyone just may forget how much they are learning. When we bake in grandma’s kitchen, we have time to enjoy one another and create happy memories. Cookie baking is the ultimate “sensory play” experience, but more than that, it involves dozens of opportunities to practice simple measuring techniques and expose your grandchild to the world of math and how it is a skill they will use every day.
Start your cookie measuring experience by showing your grandchild how fractional measuring works. It takes three 1/3 cups of sugar to fill up a 1-cup measure. This will help them start to grasp how measuring with measuring cups and measuring spoons works.
MEASURE SMALLER TO LARGER
- Measure how many 1/3 cup measures of flour it takes to fill up a 1-cup measuring cup.
- How many teaspoons of water does it take to fill up a Tablespoon?
- How many Tablespoons to fill up 1/4 cup?
- What other things can you measure with your measuring cups and measuring spoons? Sand? Rice? Water in the bathtub?
Let your grandchild be the one to poke around and set the temperature of your oven. And while the oven preheats, show them some of the tools you have in your kitchen for measuring temperature. Do you have a candy or meat thermometer handy? Play with some cold and warm water as you watch the temperature on the probe changing.
MEASURE TEMPERATURE
- When you heat up the oven, what is meant by 375 degrees?
- Using a thermometer (or your fingers if you don’t have a thermometer), measure the temperature of different things like ice, a cracked egg, a warm cookie, or a glass of milk.
- Check the temperature of some chocolate chips and see what happens when you heat them up by holding them in your hands.
What will happen to these cookies if we take one out sooner than the recipe says? What will happen if we leave one in for longer than the recipe suggests?
MEASURE TIME
- How much time does it take to bake a cookie?
- What happens if you take a cookie out of the oven 2 minutes early?
- What happens if you leave just one cookie in for 2 minutes longer than the recipe says?
- 5 minutes longer than the recipe says?
How precise will you need to be in order to measure out two cups of shortening that weigh exactly the same? Try your kitchen scale set to “grams” instead of ounces.
MEASURE WEIGHT
- If you have a kitchen scale, try measuring the weight of one cookie.
- How much do four cookies weigh?
- You can do the same with a bathroom scale. Measure how much you weigh before eating a cookie and drinking a glass of milk, and then weigh yourself again after.
You’ll find there are dozens of fun ways to measure as you are baking cookies together.
MEASURE HEIGHT AND LENGTH
- How tall is one cookie?
- Get a tape measure out. How tall are 6 cookies?
- Pull a salt shaker out of the cupboard. How many cookies tall is an egg carton or your salt shaker?
- How many cookies tall are you?
- Using an egg carton, measure how many egg cartons wide is your kitchen counter?
- How many cookies would you have to put side by side to stretch across your kitchen table?
DOWNLOAD THE INFOGRAPHIC FOR AND BRAINSTORM MORE FUN WAYS TO MEASURE
Download our free infographic (or click the image below) This colorful cheat sheet will help you and your grandchild start to brainstorm other things you can measure together. You can find economical measuring tools to send home as “toys” your grandchild can use in their pretend play.
