Christmas Baking Activities with Fractions
This is Day 10 of the 12 Days of Christmas Math Games and Activities for Homeschoolers! You can check out the other posts in the series to find easy, hands-on math lesson ideas for your homeschool this month! Today I’m excited to be sharing some fun Christmas baking activities with fractions, so that your kids can practice fractions, counting, and other math skills while baking for Christmas!
This activity was designed for kids in 1st grade, who are starting to learn about measuring and fractions. It can be adapted for kids from preschool through 4th grade using the suggestions included in this plan!
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What You Need
- This Christmas Baking free printable (get it below!)
- 1 cup applesauce
- 1 ½ cup cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons white glue
- A large mixing bowl
- Cookie cutters
- Paper plates
- A drinking straw
- Ribbon or yarn
How to Use the Christmas Baking Activities with Fractions
What to Do
- Mix the applesauce, cinnamon, and glue in a large mixing bowl.
- Roll out the dough and cut out ornaments with cookie cutters.
- Using the drinking straw, poke a hole in the top of each ornament so that you will be able to put a ribbon on the ornaments for hanging.
- Put the ornaments on paper plates to dry. They will take a couple of days to dry. It’s important to turn them over a couple of times per day when they are drying so that they will stay flat and dry evenly.
- After the ornaments are dry, tie a piece of ribbon or yarn in a loop and hang them up on the Christmas tree!
These homemade cinnamon spice ornaments should last all season long. Make a new batch each year for maximum cinnamon smell.
Notes and Tips
- Put a layer of plastic wrap in the measuring spoon before measuring the glue so that the glue won’t stick to the measuring spoon.
- Although traditional Christmas shaped cookie cutters are fun for this activity, your ornaments will be extra special if you let your kids make whatever they are interested in right now. There’s nothing that says Christmas quite like a cinnamon… dump truck 🙂
- Roll out your dough thicker to make ornaments that are more sturdy and less likely to break when dropped. Roll out your dough thinner to make ornaments that will dry faster.
Teaching Math When Baking
Baking gives lots of opportunities to teach your kids about fractions. Get out the measuring cups and show your kids how they are labeled with different fractions on each. You might even let your kids play with a set of measuring cups and some water, and experiment with using different measuring cups to fill a one cup measuring cup. Talk about how to use a measuring cup to measure ingredients as you bake, and talk about fractions as well.
Adapt These Christmas Baking Activities with Fractions For Your Kids
For Younger Kids
Give them simple jobs.
Kids who are too young to measure ingredients or read the recipe can still dump ingredients in the bowl, stir with help, or choose cookie cutters and press them into the dough.
Instead of practicing fractions, practice counting.
Kids can help you count how many scoops of each ingredient you need to add to the bowl. For more counting practice, consider using smaller measuring cups to measure the ingredients so that kids can count more scoops of each one.
If you don’t feel comfortable making something edible with your kids, try a recipe like this no cook gingerbread playdough instead!
For Older Kids
Practice equivalent fractions.
Put away the measuring cups that you need for the recipe. Then ask your child to use other measuring cups and equivalent fractions to figure out how much of each ingredient you will need. For example, how can they use the ¼ cup measuring cup to measure 1 ½ cups?
Read the recipe.
Older kids who are readers can be responsible for reading the recipe. This is a great way to practice following directions step by step, too.
Extensions: Measuring Weight
Instead of measuring your ingredients by volume with a measuring cup, measure them by weight with a food scale.
What Your Kids Will Learn:
Cooking with kids is a great way to enjoy some quality time, and lots of teachable moments at the same time. In addition to lots of hands on practice with fractions and counting, kids will be practicing reading and following directions one step at a time. Cooking skills are an important life skill for kids to have, and recipes like these are a perfect way to practice those skills.
Get the Christmas Baking Activities with Fractions Free Printable!
Fill out the form below to get your copy of the snowman addition free printable. I’ll also send the other lessons in the Christmas Math games and activities series straight to your inbox. All your math plans for the month are done!
Get all the 12 Days of Christmas Math Games and Activities Lessons!
This huge 200+ page PDF is stuffed with hands-on activities and printables to complete 12 fun Christmas themed math lessons! Each day includes complete directions and printables, plus bonus tips, extension activities, and worksheets to reinforce the concepts your kids are learning. This huge bundle includes all the activities and printables you will need to complete the 12 Days of Christmas math games and activities, plus bonus worksheets and extension activities that won’t be included in the free downloads! Harness that Christmas excitement to make homeschooling fun this season with this easy-to-use resource!
These lessons were designed for kids in preschool through 1st grade. Each lesson includes adaptations to customize it for your child’s unique needs- or so that siblings can do the activities together!
Learn more about this amazing resource here!
Christmas STEM Bundle- Save 30%
Are you looking for hands-on science experiments for your homeschool too? I’ve combined my Christmas math and science resources into a huge STEM bundle! And when you purchase both resources together you can save 30%! Learn more here.
Check out the other posts in the 12 Days of Christmas Math Games and Activities series here to find more fun activity ideas for your homeschool!
