Help reinforce the difficult skill of distributive property of multiplication in a hands on way with the Distributive Property Bakery. By using cereal pieces or counters on the bakery recording sheet mats, students will build and form a variety of arrays shown via the powerpoint presentation. You can use any type of cereal. For instance I’ve used both Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Froot Loops.
After building the array students will use the distributive property to break apart the cereal or counters into two separate arrays. Finally students record their multiplication equations on the mats.
Included in the powerpoint slides are real photos of several possible ways to solve each problem. I display the photo array samples and have a class discussion about the many ways to solve the same equation. My students always have a blast baking up their break apart arrays to show the distributive property. Give it a try!
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