"Trick or Treat" Math Fun!

Halloween is in the air and it's time for some math fun!  Our kids went trick-or-treating last night and brought home tons of candy.  So for a "Fun Friday" math activity, we decided to use our sweet treats to practice math skills.

Preschool:  Candy Monster

Our 4 year old has been working on early numeracy skills: number recognition, counting, one-to-one correspondence and the idea of "adding one more."  To begin our activity, I wrote the numbers one through ten on index cards and placed them across the floor.  Then, I told him to dump out all of his candy.  This was lots of fun!  I told him he was the candy monster and it was important to organize his candy.  He was to place the correct number of candies on each index card.  Check out his work!

From here, we talked about different ways to make each number on the card by rearranging the candy.  Also, we talked about how you add one more piece of candy to get to the next number card.  We concluded the lesson by counting the total pieces of candy as we cleaned up our mess.  Of course, no candy lesson would be complete without letting our candy monster choose his favorite treat!  Bon Appetit!

Elementary Math: Halloween Candy Activity

Our second, third and fifth graders have been working on classifying data, fractions, and percents.  This activity began by having them categorize a "pumpkin" of Halloween candy.  From here, they created a tally chart of each type and displayed the results in a bar graph using Create-A-Graph.  They also determined the fraction and percent of each type of candy.  The spreadsheet option on Google Docs was used to record their data.  Finally, they used Skitch to capture an image of the information.

This activity was great!  In addition to the concepts mentioned, we reviewed various ways to display data and when to use each type of graph.  We talked about independent and dependent variables.  Our second grader was introduced to fractions and our third grader practiced reducing fractions to lowest terms.  again, we concluded our lesson with a sweet treat and a big smile!

Happy Halloween!

Comments

[AprilS]

This is a great way to make a positive out of your kids getting a big bucket of candy on Halloween! Love the graph and tally of candy, including the percentage of what we collected. Just such a great way to combine learning with Halloween!