Three Bean Salad, a Math Activity

We've been having fun with a math activity from Family Math called Three Bean Salad. It has been a fun way to work with ratios and proportions, and figure out how to solve for 'x'.

You give your child three kinds of beans and a recipe. Each salad contains all three kinds of beans.

A simple recipe might be:
2 white beans
Twice as many red beans as white beans
10 beans in all

A more difficult recipe is:
The same number of red beans as white beans
3 more black beans than red beans
A total of 18 beans

It took SA(7) a little while to figure out that last one, but he did.

JJ(5) and MM(3) also wanted to get in on the action. I made up some simpler recipes for JJ (for example, 4 red beans, 3 white beans, 10 beans in all) and let MM make up his own culinary creations.