Assistant Principal Report 

Grade 3 to Grade 6 – Numeracy

Part 2. Exploring numeracy with your child

Sharing recipes

Discussing maths when cooking can provide a daily maths lesson involving measurement, time, and cost.

Here are some activities you could try at home:

· Collect and read recipes and discuss the use of fractions, millilitres and grams. Encourage your child to make accurate measurements using measuring cups and spoons.

· Discuss how you would double or halve a recipe. Encourage your child to record new measurements for the recipe. Discuss why and when you might need to do this.

· Identify the temperature and cooking time on the recipe. Discuss why different recipes have different temperatures and cooking times.

· Estimate the cost to buy all the ingredients to make the recipe. Compare this with the actual cost of items. Ask your child if they think it was better to buy the ingredients and make dinner or get takeaway.

· Make a list of the abbreviations used in the recipe and then write them in full – for example, l for litre, ml for millilitre, tsp. for teaspoon, tbsp. for tablespoon.

· Investigate the prices of fresh fruit and vegetables available in the supermarkets compared with market vendors.

Browsing catalogues

Discussing catalogues can be a great way to improve your child’s maths knowledge of money and percentages.

Here are some questions you could ask:

· How would you spend $40 from a catalogue? How many products can you buy for $40?

· Select five products from the catalogue, then calculate what the cost would be if there was a 50% sale. Does it make a difference if you add up the items, and then deduct 50%, or if each item is reduced by 50% then totalled?

· What is the best value sale item in the catalogue? Can you explain your reasoning?

· Compare the cost of a product across different stores using different catalogues. What did you find?

· Find an example where there is a discounted cost for multiple items. Calculate how much this will really save.

· ‘Consider how to find 10% of an item and then 20%. Is there a pattern that would make calculations in multiples of 10% easy?’

Dani Bird 

Assistant Principle