Scale drawings and new bedrooms

Our girls currently share a bedroom. They get on well together but they're getting older and beginning to want their own space. So at the end of this year, we're reorganising our house so they can have their own bedrooms. Needless to say the girls are very excited about this - especially the part where they get to choose the colour and decor for their rooms!

They're both saving up their money to be able to buy things for their new rooms. However, when we went out to the shops the other day, they were excited about buying things like storage ottomans, and comfy bean bag chairs - despite me trying to tell them that there wouldn't be enough space in their rooms.

So, when we got home, we got out the tape measure and some squared paper and made scale drawings of their new bedrooms and the furniture they're going to put in them so they have more of an idea of the space they have.

They'd never made a scale drawing before, so it was a good maths exercise for them too.  The squared paper we had was the perfect size to scale our drawings down to a tenth of the original size of the rooms and furniture.  With all our measurements in metres and centimetres, dividing everything by 10 was nice and easy.

We had fun measuring all the various items of furniture. They learnt that they only had to measure the length and width as height wasn't important for a 2 dimensional drawing!

They are now having fun 'moving the furniture' around in their rooms and deciding who will get which bookcase, and desks etc.   Since we still have a couple of months to go before everything happens, I'm sure there will be lots of different plans get made for their rooms before then.

Now all they have to do is decide on colours!

Do your kids have their own bedrooms? Did you let them choose their own colour and style?

Lemon Cookies - and more Naplan practice!

Recipes 

Our youngest daughter is a budding cook and loves making cookies and cakes.  She has a page-a-day calendar with recipes for cookies on. Here's one batch she made last week:

Ingredients:

For the Cookies:

1 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

grated zest of 3 lemons

1 1/2 cups plain flour

3tbsp cornflour

For the Filling:

4 tbsp butter

1 cup sugar

grated zest of 2 lemons

juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 350F (175C). Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla extract and lemon zest together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour and cornflour together and stir into the creamed mixture. Roll into balls and press flat on a baking sheet. Bake for 12 minutes. Allow to cool.

To make the filling, beat the butter and sugar together with the lemon zest and juice until light and fluffy. Spread the filling onto the flat side of one cookie, then put another cookie on top and sandwich together.

Baking as a way to practice numeracy skills

Baking is a great way for kids to practice a number of skills - not just the skill of baking!

Measurements are well practised as ingredients are weighed etc. Depending on the unit of measurement, sometimes fractions are sometimes practiced - as they are here, when things are measured in cups, and half cups etc.  This is something that can come up on the Naplan test in Grade 3 too. For example - here is a question I found on one of the past papers:

Thomas needs 3 cups of flour to make a cake.

He only measures 1/2 cup at a time.

How many 1/2 cups of flour will he need?

1   2   3   or 6 ?

When a student is faced with a question like this, of course they are being tested on their knowledge of basic fractions, but if they have had the real life experience of measuring flour using half cups for a recipe, then the question becomes so much more familiar and so, easier.

We have a large and varied selection of recipes that the girls can bake from - with measurements in cups, grams and ounces, depending on where the recipes come from !  It is great for the kids to be exposed to all these different measurements and to also be able to understand how they relate to each other. Many recipes have 2 different measurements shown, so the kids get used to seeing for example 100g (4 oz), and so gradually learn to convert between different units of measurement.

Estimation

The more kids bake and weigh ingredients, the better they become at estimating weights. It is not only important that kids can read and use units of measurements, but also that they have a rough idea of what, for example 1 kg might feel like.

Another way of practising this is by helping at the shops when buying say - a bag of sugar, and feel the weight of it when they put it in the basket. Or perhaps they know their own weight and so then have a reference point to compare other things to.

Estimating real weights and lengths etc is something else that may appear on the Naplan test, where the students may have to choose the most sensible or likely option from the answers as to what something might weigh or measure.

Here is another example of a question from a past paper:

Which of these is the closest to the length of a real shoe?

5cm

25cm

75cm

100cm

To answer this question, students need to understand what 1cm is actually like and be able to relate this to real life objects. I remember always using my 'big' 30cm ruler at school to compare things to when estimating lengths. It's helpful for kids to have a point of reference like this to refer to - something that they can think, "Is this object longer or shorter than my 30cm ruler?"; thus making it easier to estimate the length of something they don't know.

Real life is often the best practice

I hope these examples show that written tests not only test the student's knowledge of facts - but can be a measure of their understanding of some basic things they encounter in real life.

Sometimes the best practice for basic numeracy and literacy skills for young kids is doing something 'real' - like baking!

So - take a look in your recipe books, and see what tasty delights your kids could bake with you, for some 'homework'  today!

Vanilla jam biscuits

Both our girls like to help out when I cook and bake, but our youngest is showing a particular interest in baking cakes, sweets and biscuits.  So once a week through last term she chose and made us a new dessert.  It's great to watch her confidence grow as she learns to measure, mix and read and understand the recipes.

She's learning to weigh and measure in both imperial (pounds and ounces) and metric (grams); and also in terms of cups,  as I have a selection of recipe books from the UK and Australia so the measurements vary from recipe to recipe!

Here's one of the things she made us recently - Vanilla Jam Biscuits

Ingredients:

125g butter or margarine

1 cup caster sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups SR flour, sifted

1/2 cup custard powder, sifted

Icing:

100g butter or margarine

1 cup icing sugar, sifted

1/3 cup strawberry jam

icing sugar to dust

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Using electric beaters, beat margarine and sugar, add egg and vanilla and beat well.
3. Fold in flour and custard powder until mixture is firm. Put in fridge for 30 minutes
4. Roll out dough and cut into star shapes. Place onto greased trays and bake for 8-10 minutes until golden.
5. Cool on wire rack.
6. Make the icing - beat margarine and icing sugar together.
7. Spread a little icing, then a little jam onto a biscuit, and then sandwich another biscuit on top. Repeat with remaining biscuits.
8. Dust with icing sugar to serve.

The biscuits were a big hit with everyone and our daughter was very proud of having made them all by herself!  (I barely helped at all).  Her arms get tired using the electric beaters after a while, and I also helped with rolling out the last of the dough but pretty much everything else she did herself (I just watched and took photos!)

What a great skill to learn - and the added skills of learning and practising measurements, and following instructions provide bonus extra maths practice for the holidays, with no 'school work' in sight!  We'll be doing a lot more of this baking over the school holidays - particularly with Christmas approaching and plenty of yummy sweet recipes around to try!

Do your kids bake and cook?  What yummy dishes have they made you, and what parts do you still need to help them with?