Workshop

As part of the RLM Days, this workshop offered participants an opportunity to examine mathematical thinking through the lens of home economics and Finnish food culture. By preparing traditional Finnish dishes, participants engaged in a variety of mathematical practices, including measuring, estimating, evaluating, time management, and spatial reasoning. The workshop demonstrated how ethnomathematics can be brought to life in authentic, everyday learning environments.

I had the privilege to organize a workshop as part of the Real Life Math (RLM) gathering in Joensuu, October 2026. This workshop was part of the RLM days that were filled with active pondering surrounded with different views on mathematical thinking in home economics and consumer behavior.

Planning and executing this workshop were part of my applied teacher student practice and my master’s thesis, which I am both doing within the RLM project. My master’s thesis is based around the topic Ethnomathematics in Home Economics Activities. This workshop provided me with useful information and material to analyze in my research. Introducing the Finnish cuisine briefly both in theory and practice gave this workshop it’s cultural perspective as the ‘ethno’ implies in the term ethnomathematics. All the competence needed to read and understand a recipe and then to create the dish brings the RLM into hands-on action.

In this workshop the participants had the opportunity to create some traditional Finnish dishes with a few new twists to them. We prepared Karelian pies with Egg butter, Roasted Vegetables with Pulled Oats, Fresh Green Salad, a Vinaigrette dressing, and additionally, an Apple pie to finish our meal. While preparing these dishes, the participants had the opportunity to learn and understand different ways of measuring, to use unfamiliar kitchen utensils, estimate volumes of the various parts of the recipes and plan the time to get everything done in the timeframe at hand. The recipes brought the planning, numeracy knowledge, estimating, evaluating, measuring, spatial thinking and visualization into practice. These were some of the mathematical elements that were found while being in the home economics kitchen laboratory at the University of Eastern Finland.

The atmosphere in this workshop was enlightening, and everybody found their own tasks to do and prepare. The participants helped each other figuring how to measure using deciliters and teaspoons, also finding the right equipment and appliances, such as a special wooden rolling pin for rolling out the Karelian pie crusts to their proper shape and thinness. All in all, we had a wonderful time together, the prepared dishes looked great and tasted delicious and the discussion during our meal together was lively and full of thought-provoking ideas and insights.

Writer

Annika Saarinen

Bachelor of Home Economics

University of Eastern Finland