Math Monday (a day late)!

While planning for this school year, I decided I wanted to do Real Life Math with Princess every Friday.  I created my lessons for the year and am excited to share them with you!  

Each week, I will be doing a Math Monday post where I share our lesson from the week before.  The posts will include lesson explanations & instructions, pictures, and any printables I have made to go along with the lessons.  

We had our first Real Life Math lesson last week, and it was a lot of fun!

Real Life Math - Lesson 1

Dinner Budget

Objective:  To plan and shop for 3 family meals on a budget of $12, $10 and $8, respectively.  All three meals must be complete and healthy, feeding our family of 4.

Princess had a wonderful time with this lesson.  She started by brainstorming and filling out the Planning Worksheet with various meal ideas she thought would fit into those price categories. The Planning Worksheet I created is below.

While we were at the grocery store, she said that she finally understood why I sometimes ask her to distract Super Tot so that I can work on sticking to our grocery budget.  She didn't realize how much work it is to really stick to a budget, and how important it is to compare prices.  She was excited to check the sales and use coupons to get the most for her dollar.  She was surprised to find that several of her meal choices were way over budget, as well.

We used the "Results Worksheet" below to document the final meal choices, broken down by cost. 

I am pleased to share that after some work, Princess came in under budget with all 3 of her meals!  She was pretty excited about that, too!  

Princess had so much fun doing this project, and she has a new appreciation for the value (or lack there of, sometimes) of a dollar.  Although this particular lesson has been completed, I think I will challenge her each week to come up with at least one of our meals.  I do have several other lessons planned that will involve budgeting, as well as shopping strategies.  

I am excited to know that I am equipping Princess to leave home one day armed with the real life math skills necessary to live a life of Godly finances.

Linking to:

ABC & 123
Hip Homeschool Hop