SUMSumburst × The Caffeine Crumb: Coffee + Maths = Great Day!
Sumburst has teamed up with The Caffeine Crumb, a café serving coffee, cakes and pies, and the idea behind it is very simple: coffee + maths = a great day.
The grown-ups get their coffee and the kids get a little maths to chew on while they wait. To kick things off we made a short video, and this post covers what is in it, how the three challenge levels work, and how to run the same game at your own table.
Why a café?
Waiting for an order is one of those small dead spots in a family day. It lasts two or three minutes, which is too short to start anything and long enough for somebody to get restless. As it happens, that is about the right length for one good maths question.
A question at a café table doesn't feel like homework. There is no worksheet and no marks, just a puzzle, a few guesses and a bit of friendly arguing until someone cracks it. That is the same feeling we build the Sumburst games around: the maths is the fun part, not the price you pay to get to the fun part.
Pick your size, pick your challenge
The centrepiece of the video is the Math Fuel Menu. Just like ordering a coffee, you choose a cup size, and the size decides how tough the question is.
Small cup: easy
6 + 7 = ?
A quick warm-up for younger kids. The answer is 13. If your child counts on their fingers, try nudging them towards "make a ten": 6 + 4 is 10, and there are 3 left over, so 13. It is a small trick that makes every later addition faster.
Medium cup: medium
(10 − 4) × 3 = ? A) 14 B) 18 C) 22 D) 24
This one is all about order of operations. The brackets come first, so 10 − 4 = 6, then 6 × 3 = 18, which is answer B.
The wrong answers are there on purpose. A child who skips the brackets and does 10 − 4 × 3 ends up with a negative number, which is a good clue that something went wrong. Others rush and grab 24 or 22. If your child picks a wrong option, ask them to talk you through how they got it. That conversation is where the learning happens.
Large cup: hard
3x + 7 = 25. What is x?
This is a real algebra problem for older kids, and it unpicks in two steps. Take 7 away from both sides to get 3x = 18, then divide both sides by 3 to get x = 6. A handy habit is to check by putting the answer back in: 3 × 6 + 7 = 25. It works.
The menu board
The video finishes on a flip board with the café's take on a menu: Espresso = Energy, Latte = Focus, Mocha = Motivation. Then it flips over to the line that sums up the whole collaboration: Good coffee. Stronger mind. Keep solving!
Play it at your own table
You don't need to be at a café to play. Next time you are waiting for food, anywhere, let each child pick a cup size and hand them a question. Here are a few more for each size to get you started. The answers are at the bottom, so no peeking.
- Small (roughly grades 1 to 3): 8 + 5, then 15 − 9, then 4 × 5.
- Medium (roughly grades 4 to 6): 24 ÷ (2 + 4), then (7 + 5) × 2, then 50 − 6 × 7.
- Large (roughly grade 7 and up): 2x − 5 = 11, then 5x + 4 = 3x + 18, then 25% of 48.
A nice twist is to let kids "upsize" for bonus points. Anyone who gets a small cup right can try a medium. Mixed-age families tend to love this, because everyone can play at the same table at their own level.
Keep the momentum going
If the café questions go down well, the Sumburst Arcade carries on where they leave off. All four games are free to start, run in the browser and have no ads:
- Math Diner covers addition, subtraction and money in a busy diner kitchen. It is the perfect follow-up to a café visit.
- Slice Rush turns fractions, percentages and giving change into a pizza shop.
- Element Spellcaster is times tables and division as spellcasting.
- Kingdom Math Defender is multiplication and percentages with a castle to defend.
If you would rather work on paper, the worksheet library runs from grade 1 to grade 12. Every sheet is a printable PDF with an answer key, which makes it handy to tuck in a bag for the next coffee run.
A big thank you to The Caffeine Crumb for fuelling brains alongside the coffee. Keep sipping. Keep solving.
Answers
Small: 13, 6, 20. Medium: 4, 24, 8 (multiply before you subtract: 6 × 7 = 42, and 50 − 42 = 8). Large: x = 8, x = 7 (take 3x from both sides to get 2x + 4 = 18), and 12.