Some foods are so weird that we have to wonder who first tried eating them. Chewing gum is one of them. Gum is naturally made in trees: it’s the “resin” or sap that oozes up and down the inside of the trunk. About 9,000 years ago humans started chewing the gum from birch trees. Remember, it didn’t taste like mint or pink bubble gum — it probably tasted more like dirt. Today we make 374 TRILLION sticks of gum every year, because it tastes a lot better now!
Wee ones: The record for longest time chewing gum is 8 hours! What numbers would you say to count them off?
Little kids: If you walk 2 steps, then chew 2 times, then walk 4 steps, then chew 4 times, then take 6 steps…what do you probably do next? Bonus: If you try 10 times to blow a bubble with your gum and you succeed every time except the last, how many bubbles did you blow?
Big kids: The largest bubble-gum bubble ever blown was 23 inches wide. If your head is 7 inches wide, how much wider than your head was that bubble? Bonus: They say Americans chew an average of 300 sticks of gum per person in a year. If you chewed at that rate, how many sticks would you chew each month? Is it that crazy a number? (Hint if needed: 12 is 3 x 4, so to divide by 12, you can divide by 3, then by 4…)
Answers:
Wee ones: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Little kids: Chew 6 times (2, 4, 6). Bonus: 9 bubbles.
Big kids: 16 inches. Bonus: 25 sticks a month…about 1 per day. But some people never chew, so others are chewing a lot!
