Baking brownies

Bake brownies with your child while discussing volume and capacity. Not in the mood for brownies? You can do this activity with any recipe. An understanding of volume and capacity is important whatever you’re cooking or baking in the kitchen.

Things you need

  • Brownie recipe
  • Brownie ingredients
  • Measuring cups and scales.

The challenge

Step 1

Collect all the ingredients you need for the recipe.

Ensure the recipe is suitable for your child's dietary requirements.

Step 2

Get your child to help with measuring and weighing out the various ingredients, discussing what is meant by the different quantities and measurements as you go.

Here are some examples of what you can ask to support their understanding:

  • "Do any of the measurements need to be converted to cups or grams, depending on the measuring tools you have available?"
  • "What's bigger, half of a cup or a quarter of a cup?"
  • "What’s smaller, a teaspoon or a tablespoon?"
  • "We are doubling this recipe so we can take brownies to the picnic. How can we work out together two lots of three-quarters?"

Step 3

Follow the steps of your recipe until you've cooked something delicious that you both can enjoy!

The conversation

When your brownies are ready, talk with your child about how many brownies can fit into a container, or which container is the perfect size to fit them all. This will get their brain working on another volume and capacity conundrum.

You could also ask, "We want to cut up the sheet of brownies into 24 pieces. What's a way we could that? Is there another way we could cut the sheet to make 24 pieces?"

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