Math · Grades 5–6 and 7–8

Feed the crowd

Your child keeps a recipe's mix the same at any size, the way a cook does.

Your child scales a smoothie, pasta, muffins and bread for more or fewer people, setting every ingredient and mixing. If the mix comes out wrong, the game says how and points at the ingredient to look at.

Grades 5–6 and 7–8
15 min
Nothing to prepare
On the screen

Free to sign up.

Is it a good fit?

Ready if Your child can double and halve whole numbers.
Too much today? Start with The Pet's shop: prices and change in a shop, one purchase at a time, before scaling a whole recipe.
Too easy? The Grade 7–8 level: a recipe for 4 cooked for 10, the amount each person eats, the ingredient that runs out first, and bread as percentages of the flour.

What your child practises

Ratio
Scaling by any number
An amount per person
Percentages

Listen for

“Every line gets times two and a half, the eggs too.”

If your child says something like this, in their own words, the idea has landed. Finishing the rounds means they took part; this is the learning.

Your part

Nothing for the game itself
For the take-home, a recipe and its ingredients, and you at the stove or the oven
Each question has a Read it to me button

Take it off the screen (optional)

Scale a real family recipe for everyone at home, work the amounts out first, then cook it together.

The full design

What it is

A recipe is a ratio. Keep the mix the same and any size tastes the same: more glasses of smoothie, pasta for ten, a double tray of muffins, a bigger loaf. Change one line and not the others, and it comes out runny, thick or salty. It is really about proportional reasoning: a ratio, a rate, the amount that runs out first, and percentages.

How it goes

The recipe is on a card. Your child sets each ingredient with a minus and a plus and mixes: the blender spins, the pot bubbles, the bowl is stirred, and what it made appears beside it. When the mix is not right the game says what came out ("too runny: look at the milk, the recipe has 1 cup for every 2 bananas") or that the taste is right and the size is not ("that makes 2 glasses, not 4"). Some rounds are a question with three answers to pick from, such as which ingredient runs out first. Four kitchens make a game.

The Pet

It asks how many recipes the ask really is, and notices when every line grew by the same number. It remembers the last time: "you made this yesterday". Its dare is the next step up: at 5–6, five glasses from a recipe for two (two and a half recipes); at the top, a real recipe at home, worked out first and cooked with a grown-up at the stove.

By band

One play is four kitchens, easiest first: a smoothie, pasta, muffins and bread. 5–6: double a recipe, halve it, and fix a mix when one amount is already in ("3 cups of milk went in; keep the taste"). 7–8: any size, not a whole number of recipes ("feeds 4, cook for 10"), an amount per person, the ingredient that sets how many muffins the cupboard can make, and bread written the way bakers write it, every ingredient as a percent of the flour.

What it grows

Proportional reasoning is the heart of middle-school maths, and it grows from comparing and scaling real quantities before it is written as fractions and percents. Cooking is where most families already do it.

Done, and what counts as evidence

Done means the four kitchens with every mix right. "Scaled a recipe by the same number on every line" is an observation you may keep. The best record is a real recipe your child scaled first and then cooked with you.

What's personal

The units are your family's: grams and millilitres, or ounces and cups, from your country setting. Bread is weighed in grams everywhere, because bakers do. The recipes are the game's; nothing about what your family eats is kept.