You Oughta Know About: Yummy Math

If you teach kids in grades 3-8, you should know about YUMMY MATH!  I first discovered this amazing website last fall and was immediately hooked.  It is a great place to access real world math problems that will engage your students and show them how important math is.  

Yummy Math is a collection of problems written by teachers on a huge range of topics including sports, holidays, cooking, art, shopping and more.  "We’ve created Yummy Math to provide teachers with an easy way to bring real-life into their math classrooms. It is our belief that when math is explored in contexts that are familiar and of interest to students, students will be more engaged to do math, reason, think critically, question and communicate.  Our activities are written to correspond with the NCTM Process Standards and the CCSS Standards for Mathematical Practice."

I have used these problems multiple times in whole class situations and have had some great engagement.  When I have the opportunity to work with small groups of students who are really excited about math, these problems have been a lifesaver.  There are many problems that kids can solve in small groups or pairs during guided math time and they are a great way to help differentiate your instruction.  

All problems are provided in a PDF format for FREE!  For a small membership fee which is currently $17.95 per year you get access to answer keys and editable word documents so you can change the problems to suit your students.  

Here are a few of my favorite Yummy Math problems that my students solved last school year.

We played with ratios and proportions trying to figure out how much dye it takes to turn the Chicago river green for the St. Patrick's Day Parade.  

My students learned a lot about light bulbs and energy conservation with this investigation.  I originally did it with my fifth graders but had so much success, I repeated it with sixth and fourth graders as well. 

My sixth graders got a lesson in economics with this cell phone investigation problem.  In my area many kids seem to be getting cell phones before starting seventh grade so this investigation really made my kids aware of how much different wireless options cost.  It also lead them to explore other options online and ultimately led me to the decision to switch my plan to Republic Wireless.

My students of all ages enjoyed doing parts and pieces of this problem!  A Santa made entirely of 12 packs of soda!  The ultimate problem for counting, estimating and multiplicative reasoning!

This is just a small sample of the many wonderful problems offered by Yummy Math.  Be sure to check it out! 

Also check out all the other great ideas in the You Oughta Know Blog Hop!

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