The Magic of Proportions
Mary is making peanut fudge as a treat for her 1st grade students; they have been working very hard on learning their new vocabulary. Since they are learning about words that end in “udge´ she chose fudge. She has a total of 50 students in 3 classes. She would also like some extra for the teacher’s room. The recipe is as following
⅓cup peanut butter
½ lb. butter
1 lb. box 10x sugar
⅓ cup dried milk
⅓ cup corn syrup
1 tbsp. Water
1 teasp. Vanilla serves 16- 2’ pieces
Figure out how many recipes she needs to make. (4) to give you 64 pieces. Calculate the new measures for each ingredient using proportions.
16 64 ⅓ × 64 21.
― = ― ― ― = ― =1.33 cups or 1⅓ cups peanut butter
⅓ x 16 × x 16x
The bag of chips that Johnny just devoured the whole thing, says the sodium amount is 95mg per the 20 chip serving. The bag contains 80 chips. How much sodium did Johnny consume?
20 80 95 80 7600
― = ― = ― ― = ― =380mg sodium in 80 chips 3 ¾ oz. bag
95mg x 20 x 20x
If the total fat content is 9grams per serving of 20 chips, how much fat did he consume in eating the 80 chips?
kmarsey 
Kim,
I might even bring in real bags of chips and challenge kids to calculate the sodium or fat content. The chance to have a snack is so motivating for my students that they would eagerly complete the exercises. I might also think about actually making fudge with the class as well if I could use the home ec room for part of my class. What a great way to show kids how they can use proportion to complete a problem they might see in daily life.
Pat
great idea they love chips but baked not fried
I’m craving sugar now! Both are great real-life applications of proportions. I also thoroughly enjoyed that you mentioned you wanted to have enough fudge to bring for the teacher’s lounge :). Proportions are so commonly used to calculate nutrition information and recipes, so that would be a great connection for your students.
Kim,
I think you and I are going to try and bring our true love, FACS into our lessons whenever possible. I definately plan to do mini cooking lessons, how about you? I hope you plan to feed these students the fudge just before they go home.
Donna
What are the chances of gtting our rooms back mines not in use.