Thursday, May 13, 2010

Gallons, Quarts, Pints, and Cups... and Bug Juice!

We've been having fun working on English equivalents and conversions this week.

I found this neat problem at Learning Resources. You start with the recipe for Bug Juice and calculate how many gallons of Bug Juice you will make. You can also make your own recipe using whatever theme you'd like. For example, you could make Chocolate Chip or Flower Juice instead.


This was a neat activity I found at Beacon Learning Center. This activity has 2 steps. First, they give you a recipe for Creepy Crawly Punch and tell you how much of each ingredient you have on hand. Then they ask, do you have enough of each ingredient? If not, you need to create a shopping list for what you need to buy. Alex ended up making her own Grape Kool-Aid Punch for me to solve.

Two and a half years ago (time flies!) we made this Mrs. Gallon (usually called Mr. Gallon) which Alex remembered fondly, though she didn't remember all of the pieces.

This week, I came across this clever way to remember the gallons, quarts, pints & cups - something I have trouble remembering. Basically, you write a large G for Gallon, fill it with 4 Q's for Quarts, each Q gets to P's for Pints, and each P gets 2 C's for cups. This has really helped me! I can actually 'see' the P with 2 C's and remember a pint is equal to 2 cups. We'll see if I can remember it a year from now, though! Alex says she prefers to visualize Mrs. Gallon. 

4 comments:

Liese4 said...

I did Mr. Gallon with Joel a loooooooong time ago. The G picture is what our curriculum (K12) uses, so I've seen it with 3 kids now. Some of us are visual so this helps.

Donna said...

I am just going to have to start a file with great ideas for homeschooling so I can share them with my daughters in law! I never would have thought of this.

Actually, this wouldn't be a bad idea for my 15 yr. old. I don't think the measurements thing is real solid in his mind. He avoids the kitchen for one thing.

Robin said...

What a great visual! I'm going to draw that out and leave it on the fridge. I've decided that if I really want people to remember stuff in this house, I have to leave the info on the fridge or above the toilet.
Thanks!

Rhonda said...

We use the Gallon Man here. He is on our fridge and is quie helpful to all of my girls.

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