Not everyone will run across the same math pancake opportunity we did, but it’s an example of spontaneous learning you might come across when you’re curious about the world around you. Today we found math unexpectedly on a pancake mix.

We were given a gift with a shaped pancake pan and pancake mix. While we made pancakes, I noticed the mix makes six pancakes, but the nutritional information listed five servings. So I asked the kids what they made of it. We laughed at how strange it was that the mix couldn’t list nutritional information for six servings because it was supposed to make six pancakes. I didn’t have expectations beyond that yet. In fact I was occupied making sure the pancakes weren’t burning when my son said enthusiastically that each serving size is 1 1/5 of a pancake!

These sorts of moments energize me. I didn’t research this activity on Pinterest, collect materials, and think about how to present it to my kids, which of course I love to do. But with our pancakes, I just noticed something I found interesting and mentioned it to them. They found it interesting, and it became a spontaneous, real life math problem.

Maybe you’re wondering how we got to a place where my kids are volunteering to do math. I can tell you it’s been a life-long process, and I suppose I’m still unraveling how to explain it. But basically, we let each other know what we’re noticing, wondering, and thinking about. It plays itself out as nothing fancy, just conversations about things we find interesting. And yes, there are lots of Pokémon conversations. But we have just as many conversations about science, math, and what words mean. We talk about history, invention ideas, and recipes we’d like to try. My hope is that we’re cultivating a deep curiosity of all sorts of amazing things in our world…including pancakes and Pokémon.