How to Build Academic Skills While Baking During the Holidays
During the holidays, most of us enjoy relaxing, spending time with family, and eating delicious foods. Many people love baking special holiday treats during this festive time. Engage your child in your holiday baking and help them build important reading, writing, and math skills while having a blast and spending quality time together.
Reading
While it’s important for your child to continue reading books and being read to during the holidays, you can also help them develop their reading skills while you bake. Start by perusing recipes with them in cookbooks and online sources. Have them read the recipe titles and instructions (and of course look at pictures of the final product for inspiration) before selecting which items you’ll bake. Once you’ve selected the recipes, have your child read aloud to you the ingredients list for each recipe and make a list of all the items you’ll need to buy at the supermarket. They can also watch online videos of recipes for an added dimension. Additionally, you can discuss important vocabulary words related to baking – a key component of reading comprehension – like blend, stir, whisk, puree, and other terms you come across that your child may not have previously known.
Math
There are many ways to integrate math concepts into baking. Take your child to the supermarket with you and give them a budget for all the items you’ll need to purchase for your recipes. Then have them look for these goods and compare the prices of different items to help stay within your budget. For example, if you need to buy a bag of chocolate chips, compare the price of a name brand bag to a generic store brand bag and see which one fits better into your budget. Your child may learn that store brands are often just as good but much cheaper! You can also look for items on sale for extra cost savings. If, for instance, a jar of vanilla is buy one get one free at a certain supermarket and you need a lot of vanilla for your recipes, you’ll save money by buying vanilla at that supermarket. Before you check out, have your child estimate the total cost of all the items in your cart before you pay, then compare it to the actual cost, to work on estimation skills.
When you get home and begin to bake, have your child use a measuring cup to measure out the ingredients you need for a recipe – like 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of oil, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, etc. Ask them how much more of each ingredient you’d need if you double the recipe or cut it in half to further work on important math skills.
Writing
Tie in some creativity and fun by having your child use frosting tubes to practice writing! Young kids can practice writing letters and numbers on top of cupcakes or even on a baking tray covered with parchment paper. Older kids can write their spelling words using frosting. They can also write out math problems and solve them using frosting, rather than pen and paper. Your child can even use food coloring markers for added fun! It’s great to integrate hands-on activities while working on academic concepts to help make the learning process more enjoyable.
The holiday season is a fun, festive time of year. Help your child continue building key academic skills with these ideas and they will likely begin the new year on a much stronger note.