Having kids run their own bakery is such a fun way to practice basic operations with whole numbers and decimals, and running their own businesses gives students a chance to review financial literacy concepts as well!
The best part about this activity is you can make it as simple or as in-depth as you want and it works for so many different age groups. I like to incorporate art by having the kids create a name for their bakery and design eye-catching signs to decorate their work area. Some even made their own menus with drawings of the baked goods they planned to have in their bakery. To add a writing component, students can write advertisements or descriptions of their baked goods.
We’ve done this activity using real baked goods, but it can be done with paper “baked goods” as well. You can have students draw and cut out their own, or use the ones provided in the Bakery Math Activity we created! To keep it super simple for preschoolers or kindergartners, have them price their baked goods using whole numbers smaller than ten. Hand out play money in ones, tens, and fives, and let them take turns “shopping” at the bakery. When they’re finished, they can count up their money to see how much their bakery earned.
For upper-elementary and higher, students can keep track of their sales and their bakery costs to find out how much the bakery earned in profits. Older kids easily understand that businesses have to spend money in order to create their products, so I like to give them a “cost per unit” to record for each of their baked goods before they start selling. Then after they figure out how much they earned for the day, they have to subtract their costs to find out how much profit they made. This is where you can adjust the level of math difficulty depending on the age of your kiddos. For younger grades, I give simple whole numbers for their costs (typically just $1 or $2). For upper-elementary, I use this as an opportunity to practice our decimal operations and give them costs that are both dollars and cents. They can keep track of this in their notebooks, or you can use the tracking sheets provided in our Bakery Math activity.
The best part? If you choose to use real baked goods, you get to “shop” too and get a little snack in the middle of the day!
We’re the Nolans: teachers, parents, and resource creators.
Mr. Nolan graduated in 2007 from Texas A&M and began teaching 5th grade math & science. Mrs. Nolan graduated from Baylor University in 2012 and earned her Master’s degree in English while teaching 4th grade. We’ve combined our collective 20+ years experience teaching upper-elementary to bring you the information and products found here on our website.
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