My son had a math teacher in middle school who was also a national champion ginger bread house designer and builder! She gave the kids a marvelous assignment for extra credit – to design and build a ginger bread house.
There was lots of guidance and many suggestions. She sent home lots of reading material for parents to help them assist with the project. I am pretty much inept in the kitchen and she sent home enough written support, and did enough instruction with the kids, that I was able to get through this with my son successfully.
There was tons of authentic math involved…creating the design (scale, angles), measuring the ingredients (fractions, units of measurement), baking temperature and baking time (measuring temperature, elapsed time)… There were limitless opportunities to bring in authentic math skills.
We continued this as a family tradition for many years. As a mother, I saw it as great family bonding time, especially with teenagers who were difficult to corral into family bonding. As a teacher, I also knew my teenagers were getting great authentic experiences with reading, math, creativity and problem solving.
One year, we even encountered an authentic mystery to solve. We used chocolate mints as shingles on the roof. We were surprised and a tad confused to see that every morning the shingles had “melted.” We lived in the north and didn’t overheat our house, so we couldn’t figure out what was happening. We had lots of hypotheses but none seemed to be the answer. One night I came downstairs to get something from the kitchen and caught one of our cats happily licking the roof. Mystery solved!
*The photo above is not the house we built. It is a professionally created display that is presented yearly at a local hotel. You probably figured that out on your own!
The Educational Journey 