Annotated Bib - Food Multiplication

Multiplication allows one to determine how many are in a total set by knowing how many equal groups there are and how many objects are in each set. Multiplication is a quicker and more efficient way of doing repeated addition. Multiplication is used in everyday situations particularly with food. Cooking, buying, ordering, and selling food all require multiplication. It is important to be able to multiply the amount of food ordered or the ingredients in a recipe by a particular amount in order to feed all those who intend to eat it. Students begin learning multiplication facts in third grade.

Books
The 512 Ants on Sullivan Street. By Carol Losi. Illus. by Patrick Merrell. 1997. 48p. Scholastic Inc., (0590308769). Gr. 3.
This book uses rhyming to tell the story of a girl who goes on a picnic, but ants are increasingly stealing her food. The amount of ants doubles each time which practices multiplying by twos and illustrates how quickly numbers increase when using multiplication.

Breakfast at Danny's Diner. By Judith Stamper. Illus. by Chris Demarest. 2003. 46p. Grosset & Dunlap, (9780448432663). Gr. 3-4.
This chapter book tells the story of Tony and Tina who spend the day helping their Uncle Danny at his dinner. They use multiplication in helping them set up the restaurant and cook the meals. They see that there is a lot of math and multiplication that goes into operating a restaurant. This book practices math facts up to twelve and shows the application of multiplication in an everyday situation.

Minnie's Diner. By Dayle Dodds. Illus. by John Manders. 2004. 40p. Candlewick Press, (9780763617363). Gr. 3.
This books tells the story of brothers who go to a diner and order food. Each consecutive brother orders twice the amount of food previously ordered which shows multiplication by twos. The drawings in the book are great and do a really nice job of showing the idea of doubling.

More M&M's Math. By Barbara McGrath. Illus. by Roger Glass. 1998. 32p. Charlesbridge, (9780881069938). Gr. 2-4.
This book counts M&Ms to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The book shows all of the equations in both numeral form and lays the M&Ms out.

Too Many Cooks! By Andrea Buckless. Illus. by K.A. Jacobs. 2000. 32p. Scholastic Inc, (9780439169660). Gr. 3.
Siblings Cara, Jay, and Marcos cook up a soup, but they can not remember the recipe. They try to re-create the soup by thinking up the ingredients and multiplying the quantities by how many people will eat it. The book is silly but uses multiplication and has a useful guide in the book for explaining the equations used in the story.

Web Sites
The Ants Go Marching
A great game for students to practice their multiplication facts. Students must answer the questions before the ants eat their food. It would be easy to pair with The 512 Ants on Sullivan Street because they have the same theme. Students can choose which facts they want to work on.

Mouse Pizza
Students practice multiplication facts by dragging pizza to the table with the correct product number. Students can also choose which facts they want to practice.

Baking Cookies
Information and a lesson plan about how teaching using multiplication with food or recipes is a good way to make multiplication more concrete. It explains about how to teach while baking chocolate chip cookies.

Recipes
A lesson plan that teaches why it is important to multiply ingredients.

Penguin Milkshakes
A game in which students must answer the correct multiplication fact in order to serve their customers and keep everyone happy

For Teachers
VA Standard of Learning
3.5 The student will recall multiplication facts through the twelves table, and the corresponding division facts.

Background Information from Curriculum Framework

• Strategies to learn the multiplication facts through the twelves table include an understanding of multiples/skip counting, properties of zero and one as factors, pattern of nines, commutative property, and related facts
• Creating real-life problems and solving them facilitates the connection between mathematics and everyday experiences (e.g., area problems)
• Develop fluency with number combinations for multiplication and division
• Understand that multiplication is repeated addition.