The Bakery

Your third graders are about to argue about cupcakes.

The Bakery puts your students in charge of a cupcake shop with a real budget, real customers, and five days of decisions. They pick flavors, set prices, and watch what sells. On Day 3 a food blogger changes everything, and the teams who follow the data beat the teams who follow their favorite flavor. It is grade-3 math they argue about, not a worksheet they fill in.

See what your students get, and why it lands.

No mockups. Every page below is real, pulled straight from the files you download. Tap any one to see it full size.

A worksheet cannot do what a real decision does.

Your third graders are not solving someone else's word problems. They are running Sweet Spot Cupcake Shop, picking how many of each flavor to bake and what to charge, then living with what sells. On Day 3 a food blogger flips the whole town toward strawberry, and every team has to decide: stick with the chocolate they love, or follow the numbers. That is where multiplication and money stop being a worksheet and start being a decision they care about.

Tap to read the Day 3 twist

They are graded on their thinking, not on the profit.

Here is what surprises teachers. The team that made the most money is not graded higher than the team that lost it. There is no winning number. Students are scored on the quality of their reasoning, written in their own reflection. A team that lost money but can explain exactly what went wrong scores higher than a team that got lucky and cannot say why. That is how a third grader learns that good thinking matters more than a good result.

Tap to read the grading note

Let the workbook do the math.

No third grader should miss the lesson because the multiplication got away from them. The Bakery comes with a workbook that does the money math for the team. They enter their batches, sales, and price, and the cost, the revenue, and the profit all calculate on their own. Their attention stays on the real question, what to bake and what to charge, instead of on the arithmetic.

Tap to see the profit tracker

Five days, already scripted. You just run the room.

You do not need to teach behavioral economics to run this. The guide scripts every day, tells you what students will likely say, and gives you exactly how to respond, including the say-it-out-loud moments. The flavors, the food blogger twist, the Big Order, and the Day 5 reveal are all written for you. You bring the facilitation. The mission brings everything else.

Tap to read the teacher guide

The lesson plan is already written.

Every simulation comes with a fully editable, admin-ready lesson plan. Standards alignment, daily pacing, learning objectives, differentiation, and an assessment plan are already done, so you can hand it to an administrator or adapt it to your district template in minutes.

Tap to preview the lesson plan

Everything you need to run it.