You might use just a few tablespoons of maple syrup on your pancakes — but it took about a gallon of maple tree sap to make that! Each spring, maple tree farms collect maple sap from their trees. They drill holes in the bark and stick in a “tap,” or tube, so the sap can drip out into buckets. Then the farm folks boil down 30 to 50 gallons of sap to make just 1 gallon of nice thick syrup. Much easier to keep a bottle in the fridge!
Wee ones: If you eat 4 waffles and 3 pancakes, of which food did you eat more?
Little kids: If you drizzle syrup into the 1st square hole in your waffle, then the 3rd, then the 5th, then the 7th…what number hole gets syrup next? Bonus: If you drizzle syrup into the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and every other odd-numbered hole in your waffle, what number is the 10th hole that gets syrup?
Big kids: If you use 3 tablespoons of syrup on your pancakes, and it took 40 times as much sap to make that, how many tablespoons of sap made your breakfast syrup? Bonus: It takes 120 tablespoons of sap to make 3 tablespoons of syrup! To imagine what that would look like, about how many cups of sap is that? (A cup has 16 tablespoons.)
Answers:
Wee ones: More waffles.
Little kids: The 9th hole. Bonus: The 19th hole.
Big kids: 120 tablespoons of sap. Bonus: More than 7 cups! It’s 7 1/2 to be exact.
