I love getting my kids in the kitchen with me – especially to bake. My heart melts as I see all four of my kids crammed onto the counter, trying to peer into the mixing bowl, and clamoring to have a turn to dump in the ingredients. Today we had some fun mixing up a batch of our favorite sugar cookies for Daddy to take to work for his staff meeting tomorrow. (Hope everyone likes an abundance of sprinkles!) 😉
 
 (I could have put the one where they were all looking and smiling like little angels…but I’d rather have you know that that sort of thing doesn’t happen at my house either! This is REAL life, and these are my four adorable, active, won’t-sit-still-or-smile-cute-for-a-picture kiddos!)
When I was in the classroom as a teacher, I loved designing learning activities that centered around a theme. Thematic learning creates an experience for children, and helps cement ideas to memory. Since my kids and I were spending time together baking cookies, I wanted to create a “cookie” math activity.
This activity is great, because it allows for kids to work on a variety of math skills – working at their individual level. I designed the printable to be suitable for children ages 2-8. Kids can use this activity to work on number recognition (numeral and word), addition, subtraction, and multiplication.
To Play
Print out a copy of the Gingerbread Cookie Math . The printable includes two pages. One page has the outline of four gingerbread cookies. The second page features the numerals 1-10, the number words 1-10, and an addition fact, subtraction fact, and multiplication fact for each number 1-10.
Cut apart the numeral, number word, and math fact cards. Choose the skill set that you’d like your child to work on.
Place one card next to each cookie. Provide your child with pom poms, buttons, jewels, stickers, etc. I like using something like pom-poms or buttons, as they allow you to re-use the printable over and over.
Have your child figure out how many pom-poms they need to place on each cookie. (As a bonus, the kids can use the pom-poms as math manipulatives, to help them figure out the equations! Hands-on math is super-important for early learners. Visualization is key to understanding!)
Happy playing, learning, and baking too!
