Cooking – A Little Learning Journey through wonder and Mathematics
This year began with many celebrations. For Deep Amavasya, we had planned our cooking experience a little differently.
Instead of simply cooking a recipe with parent volunteers on the festival day, the work towards it began much early one. It started with first knowing what is to be cooked on the festival day. Then children wrote the recipe together in class, using the fractions and measurements, which we have recently been learning in our Grade 3 and Grade 4 Mathematics lessons.
Then the week before the festival, children carried a little task home — to look for simple ingredients such as Wheat flour, jaggery and semolina in their own kitchens, mix them all in appropriate proportions as per the recipe and knead just one small dough ball by themselves for the cooking day.
And on the cooking, the children came back with some wonderful experiences to share:
“I enjoyed waking up early today because I had something to do.”
“I felt fresh this morning.”
“I kneaded the dough myself and told my parents not to help me!”
“I searched for all the ingredients myself in the kitchen.”
“I multiplied the ingredients three times because I wanted to make extra dough!”
“I can cook this again as am more confident now. And I have the recipe written too”
There were also some beautiful little mathematical discoveries along the way.
* One child shared that 4 tablespoons of water went into the dough instead of the 2 tablespoons mentioned in the recipe — and experienced how the dough changed.
* Another child discovered that 2 tablespoons of water were just right to bring the dough together.
These are the moments when *mathematics moves beyond the page* — when a child can feel a measurement, notice a difference, make a connection and learn from their own experience.
What looked like a simple Deep Amavasya cooking activity became so much more:
~ Fractions became ingredients.
~ Measurements became touch and feeling.
~ Mathematics became something to live.
~ And a simple cooking task became an opportunity for independence,*observation and joy.*
A little diya, a little dough, a little mathematics — and a whole lot of learning. 
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