candy math
With Halloween right around the corner, I’m reposting Candy Math, originally published November 1, 2007. Here are a few additional activities I just found that will help you get rid of some of the candy your kids will soon be collecting.
Sweet Sorting: A Fun Activity to Practice Categorizing
Get Halloween Math Practice with Candy Calories
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If you have leftover Halloween (or Easter or Christmas) candy, use it for some fun math practice! Here are a few suggestions:
- Sort the candy by type, color, or other categories
- Make a graph
- Group the candy into sets and practice counting by 1s, 2s, 3s, 5s, or 10s
- Do greater-than and less-than comparisons
- Find sums of two different types of candy and the difference between one type of candy and another
- For older students, find the mean, median, and mode
- Find the percentage of each type or color of the whole candy stash
We dumped out all of our candy and decided to sort it into the following categories:
-suckers
-chocolate bites/rolls/drops
-candy bars
-gum
-chewy candy (not chocolate)
-hard candy
-Smarties
We then sorted and counted each piece of candy and made tally marks for each category. I modified this worksheet to match our categories, and we filled it out together. We then sorted all the candy into piles of five, and my daughter counted by fives to find the total number. I modified this graphing worksheet to match our category designations. We unwrapped all the Smarties candies and sorted them by color, arranging them into a graph (albeit not a straight, precise one). Finally, because we had several packages of Smarties Money (larger Smarties with different dollar and cent amounts stamped on top), we added up the total amount of Smarties Money in our pile ($71.86!).
Quote of the Morning: “All this candy sorting is making me hungry!”
You could also do this activity while making gingerbread houses or at any other time of year. What other math activities have you done using candy?
Other Resources:
Candy Coated Classroom Activities
We also really liked Loreen Leedy’s fun children’s book, The Great Graph Contest, which shows different types of graphs and how they’re used.
Love it!! We’re planning our own math fun this week and next!
Great idea! I think we did this one year, but I love all the upper math examples you listed! And it’s a great way to get rid of all the old Easter candy!