Cookies Inc. - Recipe Ratios
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ActiveLearningLabs
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Lab Description
Welcome to the "Cookies Inc. - Recipe Ratios" Business Lab! This lab is designed to provide high school students with hands-on experience in entrepreneurship, mathematics, and business management.
In this lab, students will embark on a journey to start their own cookie business using grandma's special recipe. However, there's a twist – they begin with limited funds and must navigate through mathematical calculations, budgeting, and decision-making to turn their business idea into a profitable venture.
The lab unfolds in several stages:
- Business Idea Exploration: Students explore the concept of starting a cookie business, initially outside a mall using a cookie cart.
- Mathematical Conversions: Students apply mathematical concepts such as ratios and proportions to convert kitchen units (like cups and tablespoons) into standard units (such as pounds and gallons) for ingredients.
- Cost Calculations: Using a supplier's rate card, students calculate the total cost of making one cookie and determine the cost for a batch of 25 cookies.
- Budgeting and Purchasing: With a $1500 investment from grandma, students budget and purchase ingredients for their initial batch of cookies while ensuring they stay within budget.
- Sales and Revenue: Students track their sales at $1.20 per cookie, using the revenue from the first month to reinvest in ingredients for subsequent batches.
- Profit Generation: The ultimate goal is for students to generate enough profit by the end of the third month to repay grandma's initial investment and have an additional $3000 in profit.
Through this immersive lab, students will develop critical skills in mathematics, financial literacy, problem-solving, and entrepreneurial thinking. It's a dynamic learning experience that bridges the gap between classroom learning and real-world application, preparing students for future success in business and beyond.
Student Feedback
Common Core Math -
Ratios & Proportions
Recognize and represent proportional relationships between quantities.
Common Core Math -
Ratios & Proportions
Compute unit rates associated with ratios of fractions, including ratios of lengths, areas and other quantities measured in like or different units. *For example, if a person walks 1/2 mile in each 1/4 hour, compute the unit rate as the complex fraction ^1/2/1/4 miles per hour, equivalently 2 miles per hour*.
Common Core Math -
Ratios & Proportions
Solve unit rate problems including those involving unit pricing and constant speed. *For example, if it took 7 hours to mow 4 lawns, then at that rate, how many lawns could be mowed in 35 hours? At what rate were lawns being mowed?*
Common Core Math -
Ratios & Proportions
Make tables of equivalent ratios relating quantities with whole-number measurements, find missing values in the tables, and plot the pairs of values on the coordinate plane. Use tables to compare ratios.
Common Core Math -
Ratios & Proportions
Use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real-world and mathematical problems, e.g., by reasoning about tables of equivalent ratios, tape diagrams, double number line diagrams, or equations.
Common Core Math -
Ratios & Proportions
Understand the concept of a unit rate a/b associated with a ratio a:b with b ≠ 0, and use rate language in the context of a ratio relationship. *For example, "This recipe has a ratio of 3 cups of flour to 4 cups of sugar, so there is 3/4 cup of flour for each cup of sugar." "We paid $75 for 15 hamburgers, which is a rate of $5 per hamburger."*
Common Core Math -
Ratios & Proportions
Understand the concept of a ratio and use ratio language to describe a ratio relationship between two quantities. *For example, "The ratio of wings to beaks in the bird house at the zoo was 2:1, because for every 2 wings there was 1 beak." "For every vote candidate A received, candidate C received nearly three votes."*
Common Core Math -
Number System
Interpret and compute quotients of fractions, and solve word problems involving division of fractions by fractions, e.g., by using visual fraction models and equations to represent the problem. *For example, create a story context for (2/3) ÷ (3/4) and use a visual fraction model to show the quotient; use the relationship between multiplication and division to explain that (2/3) ÷ (3/4) = 8/9 because 3/4 of 8/9 is 2/3. (In general, (a/b) ÷ (c/d) = ad/bc.) How much chocolate will each person get if 3 people share 1/2 lb of chocolate equally? How many 3/4-cup servings are in 2/3 of a cup of yogurt? How wide is a rectangular strip of land with length 3/4 mi and area 1/2 square mi?*.
Common Core Math -
Expressions & Equations
Write, read, and evaluate expressions in which letters stand for numbers.
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