Pumpkin Bar Math Lab

Perhaps I didn’t feel like cooking for Thanksgiving because I was pretty busy cooking for two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.

Who knew you could turn pumpkin bars into a math lab?

Leave it to Scary Baby!

We ended up baking 4 trays/pans of pumpkin bars. And didn’t take a picture of a single finished product.

It was nice to have Granny here to help. She washes dishes sometimes faster than I was getting them dirty.

Not sure who decided the week before Thanksgiving is a good time to ask for home-baked desserts for a teacher appreciation day but since we were already making them, it wasn’t that much trouble to make one more batch.

Then PhilBillPaul whined that we couldn’t send them all to school and he wanted a tray for home.

And Granny and I were driving up to see the darling twins at school so I thought we should bring a tray to them.

It was a math project about fractions and increasing or decreasing recipe ingredients. It worked out quite well.

She made two batches all by herself.

We did a little homeschool extra credit work about how to convert the box of powdered sugar from servings into cups. Glad we don’t have that scene on video. In Scary Baby’s defense it was 3 adults against one 6th grader. By the 4th tray, I admit my patience was wearing thin.

It was one of those rare times where mom really jumped in and helped with the printed part of the project. We actually did this part two nights before the baking.

Seemed like a good time to show her the joys of digital scrapbook kits. She’s pretty impressed with the saddle-stitch stapler I’ve owned for years and years. All the kids take for granted that every house should have all kinds of office supplies and scrapbook supplies at their disposal. Go figure.

Her Pumpkin Bar Math Lab booklet complete with a pocket to put recipe cards for the taking looked pretty darn good.

I loved that we actually ended up recreating a moment of baking with mom that was just like her big sister helping 10 years ago.

We got to include both photos in her booklet since she wrote a sweet little story about having pumpkin bars every year.

I put the digital paper in the computer program and she typed everything she had written out in her beyond-her-eleven-years amusing style.

We’re still waiting to hear our grade on the Math Lab.