Seventh-grade students at Lake George Jr.-Sr. High School recently took their math skills into the kitchen, at least on paper. Under the guidance of math teacher Ryan Seymour, students worked on fractions through a creative, hands-on “recipe” activity designed to make math both practical and fun.
Students began by finding a recipe online that included at least five ingredients, with three of them featuring fractions. They then wrote down their recipe, illustrated it with a drawing of the finished dish, and selected two fraction-based ingredients to use for the next step of the project.
To apply their learning, students rotated through four math stations, each focused on a different operation: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. At each station, they selected a card containing a problem related to their chosen ingredients and solved it using the fractions from their recipe.
“This lesson gives students the chance to apply real-life skills to math concepts,” said Seymour. “With the holiday season approaching, it’s a great way for them to see how math connects to everyday life, like adjusting recipes for family gatherings or doubling ingredients when cooking for a crowd.”
By blending practical problem-solving with creativity, the activity showed students that math isn’t just about numbers, it’s about the real world, too.