Pasta Math

Pasta is not only yummy, but a great tool to teach some math concepts to kids of all ages while having a lot of fun. Keep your kids entertained while cooking, or make an afternoon project out of it.

For the Little Ones

​Just count the pasta, sort the pasta, group the pasta. You can count up and down, count by 3’s and 4’s, find out who has more etc. Play a game of “How many do I have?” to practice number sense: You and your child take turns to pick a number of pasta pieces without showing the other person. Now it is the other person’s turn to find out the number by guessing. The person who picked the number will say “The number is greater” or “The number is smaller” or “You got it”.

This is Elementary

Who would have guessed: You can practice adding and subtracting with pasta. But make it fun!  ​

Ratios

Middle schoolers can learn with pasta, too. How about finding the ratio between different types of pasta? Take two types of pasta and find part-to-part ratios and part-to-whole ratios. If the ratio is known, can I find the missing number of one type of pasta? Find equivalent ratios and make a ratio table. You can even graph these ratios. There is no limit!

Unit Conversion

What is better suited for learning about unit conversion than food items? Measure the weight of pasta and convert pounds into ounces, pounds into kilograms or grams and the other way around. You can even use units like tons and micrograms to make it more fun and challenging. Extra challenge: Find out the weight of one piece of pasta.

Graphs

Practice graphing: There are so many different ways to represent numbers of pasta pieces, and this is the time to practice. Draw Venn diagrams, dot plots, bar graphs, line plots, etc. ​

Binary numbers

Here is something exotic and not often taught at school: Teach your kids about the binary number system using pasta. Pick a number of pasta pieces and make piles of 1,2,4,8,... pieces of pasta. You should try to make the largest piles possible, and you should end up with only one or no pile of each number. Sort them from largest to smallest pile, and voila you have created the corresponding binary number.

Linear Functions

My personal favorite: Practice graphs of linear functions using spaghetti. Most students find graphing lines tedious. Using pasta will save them the time-consuming work of graphing, and they can still learn about slopes and y-intercepts. Find the function corresponding to a graph, or create the graph of a function. Create graphs with the same slope (parallel lines, remember?) or the same y-intercept. What does a slope of 0 mean? Algebra is so much easier, if it is just playing around with spaghetti! 

Solving Equations

Solving equations with pasta: Find the unknown number of pasta pieces (x) hidden under the cup. The rules: 1. The is the same number of pasta pieces on both sides of the equal sign. You can take away and add the same number of pasta pieces and multiply and divide by the same number on both sides of the equal sign.

Geometry

Pasta is also a wonderful tool to learn more about geometry. Your geometry students can recreate all kinds of shapes and learn what geometry theorems mean. Here is just one example: The Triangle Inequality Theorem says that in triangles the sum of two side lengths is always greater than the third side length. Check it out with spaghetti!

Patterns

Create patterns and find the rule: Patterns are essential for the understanding of functions, sequences and series. Patterns can be fun for kids of all ages. Simply make them easier or harder. There is no limit!

These are just a few ideas. There are so many more things to do with pasta. Get creative! And if you are running out of pasta because ...you know… then just use different types of dry beans :) Have fun!