Word problems are coming home thick and fast as a part of my daughter's math homework these days. Maybe she does well with them because we solve them at home too. Here are some we've recently worked on:
1. A child with type 1 diabetes wants to eat 1 cup of chex for breakfast. If 3/4 cup of multigrain chex contains 39 grams of carbs, how many carbs does one cup have? Bonus: If 14 pieces of chex are left in the box and the child consumes these as well, how many carbs should be added to the total?
2. One roll of smarties has 4 grams of carbohydrate. Each roll contains 15 candies. If 10 grams of carbohydrate are required to raise a low blood sugar, how many smarties should be consumed? How many rolls will be needed?
3. One batch of cookie dough contains 620 grams of carbohydrate. If 48 cookies are made, how many grams of carbohydrate are in each cookie? If 1/8 of a cup of sugar is ommitted from the cookie topping, does the final answer change?
4. Mom makes homemade chicken soup with rice. The entire pot of soup, approximately 2 quarts, contains 1 cup of cooked rice. How many grams of carbohydrate does 1 cup of soup contain?
5. The grilled cheese sandwich comes with a side of homemade french fries varying in length from 1 to 3 inches. How many carbs are in 15 of these fries plus 5 of your mother's sweet potato fries?
Diabetes math problems aren't always as solveable as 5th grade textbook ones. Some of these we solved correctly with math. Others required a bit of luck. Others we got wrong, but gathered information to help us obtain a more accurate answer next time.
Now, for extra credit:
If 89 baby goldfish crackers contain 20 carbs, how many minutes will it take to count said goldfish into a bowl? What is the number of goldfish the count can be off by before the change in carbohydrate grams would cause a significant flux in blood sugar?
these are great.
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