If you’re looking for a way to keep your big kid excited about learning math, these candy-based ideas are definitely ones you want to try!
Let’s use these delicious treats to power their brain (no matter what holiday you celebrate that typically involves candy).
This article is the second article in a series that breaks down ways to get your kiddo mathematically thinking before they get to munching. Please note that while approximate ages are suggested, you should always follow your child’s specific developmental needs, regardless of their actual age. Meet them where they are ready to learn, and they will grow from there.
Math concepts during the elementary school years can easily become more challenging than fun for kids. Giving them a way to keep playing while learning helps these big kids enjoy practicing in a low-stress way. Some of the concepts they learned as little kids are still being reinforced and expanded upon now, such as sorting, classifying, counting with one-to-one correspondence, understanding quantities, estimation, patterns, and graphing.
Here’s how to build children’s math understanding with fun, easy candy activities:
Sort Candy
Ask your child to sort all the candies by one trait, such as color, size, type, or texture. Then, ask them to come up with another way to sort the original pile. Then again. And again! See how many different ways they can come up with.
When they create their own rules, it may be tricky to understand their reasoning just by looking at the sorted piles. (For instance, if the piles look like mixed colors and mixed-up types of candy, your child may tell you they sorted by taste, or by the manufacturers.) Asking them to explain the rule they followed gives them a chance to explain their reasoning and lets you check that their piles match their idea.
Once the candy has been sorted into one category, ask your child to sort those existing piles into a second category. For example, they may have sorted the candy by color first, and now they will take each of those piles to sort by shape, leaving them with “red circles, red squares, blue circles, blue squares, etc.”
Counting, One-to-One Correspondence, and Quantity
If you have A LOT of candy (think multiple kids putting together all their Halloween loot after trick-or-treating in a bougie neighborhood), see if they can count it all. Ideally, this number will be greater than 50.
Another way to do this is to use something much smaller, such as sprinkles or mini chocolate chips.
They can also skip count by 2s, 5s, or 10s. Help remind them that skip counting is not figuring out the correct number of candies; that can only be done by counting by 1s. However, skip counting is an amazing way to help their brain develop a deeper understanding of multiplication and division!
No matter how much candy they have, challenge them to count in another language.
Candy Estimation
Put candies in random, smaller piles, ask your child to estimate the number of candies in each pile. Help them write down the number they predicted on a piece of paper near each pile. Then, after they have actually counted the amount in each pile, ask your child to write the true number of candies.
Ask them to share what they notice about their estimate compared to the actual number. “Why do you think your guess was larger/smaller than the actual number? Which of the piles was your guess the closest to the actual number?”
Challenge them to figure out how many more candies would be needed to have equal amounts in each pile. For instance, if one pile has 37 and another has 16, they would need to solve 37-16=21. Then state that 21 candies need to be added to the pile with 16 or 21 candies need to be removed from the pile of 37.
If you have a food scale (or a very sensitive body weight scale), ask your child to estimate how many of one type of candy would equal the weight of another type of candy.
For this activity, a great challenge would be to get candy that is really deceiving! Think marshmallow chicks or hollow chocolate bunnies for candies that are large and light. Estimating these candies along with small, heavy candies, such as gumballs or maltballs, will make this tricky and fun for their brain to figure out!
You can also repeat this activity another way by estimating how many type A candies would be needed as compared to the number of type B candies to equal the same number of type C candies. In food terms, how many M&Ms do you estimate weigh the same as 3 peanut butter cups? How many gummy bears do you estimate weigh the same as 3 peanut butter cups? Keep asking them to explain their thinking about their estimates before weighing, and to explain what they notice about their estimates after weighing.
Candy Patterns
*If you need a quick refresher of AB/AAB/ABC patterns, check out the first article in this series for more information.*
Create a pattern for your child and ask them to figure out what type of pattern it is, using letter terms. For example, you can lay out “red Skittle, green Skittle, yellow Skittle, red Skittle, green Skittle, yellow Skittle…” and they would say it is an ABC pattern.
To make this more challenging, you can use different types of candy with similar traits, making your child figure out what is the true pattern. For example, if you put “red Skittle, green Starburst, yellow M&M, red M&M, green Skittle, yellow Starburst…,” it will be trickier for them to figure out that the ABC pattern is by color, not by type of candy!
Another way to play with patterns is to create a mistake and ask them to help fix it. This might look like you laying out candy in this way: “ABBABBABCABBABB”, and your child would figure out that the “C” is wrong and should be another “B”.
One other idea is to ask them to help create a growing pattern. A growing pattern is when the previous part of the pattern repeats, and one new thing is added on.
In letters, this can look like “AABABCABCDABCDE” with each letter being a different type of candy.
If this concept is hard, create one together first. After a few rounds, ask your child to try it again with different candies in each spot. This can help them to practice something tricky with you first before trying to replicate it on their own.
Make a Candy Graph
**Since I just did this with my mini me, I’m going to explain graphing a little differently, as a story where each part builds on the last in order, instead of separate activities as the previous categories were written.
First, after buying way too many types of egg-inspired candies (thank you, Aldi and Dollar Tree, for keeping this budget in check!), I asked my son how he wants to rate each type. As he came up with ideas, such as texture or chocolatey-ness, we talked about how to make sure he made fair decisions. This brought up the concept of a rubric- a standard way to make decisions between multiple choices or multiple test subjects (cough, I may have repeated this activity after he went to bed, cough).
Determining the Measurements
I asked him what numbers he wanted on his scale, and he chose 1-10. Then I asked him to clarify whether 1 was the highest score or 10. Even if he had this idea in his head, asking him to say it aloud ensured that we wrote down his thinking, which allows others to know it as well.
During the testing, he came up with his own rubric dilemma: “Can I give something a 0? Like it’s that bad?” We talked through what that would mean for the scale he had already chosen to start at 1, and how it would affect the other candies he had already scored. He ultimately decided to keep the scale at 1-10, but revised some previous candies that had a score of 1 to a higher score, so that one really bad candy could get the lowest possible score it deserved!
When he was tasting the candies, my job was to help keep the data collection organized. I created the rubric alongside him, explaining why I was writing the categories he chose across the top of the page and why the numbers 1-16 were going down the side of the page. (Yes, I know, 16 types of candy is overkill and I would make different choices if we do this again in the future!)
Every time he tasted a candy, he would tell me the ranking it deserved in each category. I would then write the number in the correct column under that category, on the same line (or row). I didn’t feel like writing out the names of each type of candy, which is why I wrote 1-16, and we put sticky notes on each package of candy with a corresponding number.
Some kids may be ready to keep their own data collection, meaning they may be able to write their rankings independently. Some kids will struggle with this at any age because it requires a challenging level of organization and memory to complete this task simultaneously. Both ways are great, help them however they need!
Graphing Tips
If you notice that your kiddo’s rankings don’t make sense, don’t worry about it. There were times that he gave one candy a high score and another candy a low score in the same “Packing Fanciness” category, and I swear they had the same packaging. This activity is purely opinion-based and will not be included in their future college application; let them put whatever makes sense to them.
However, there are some things that would be helpful to ask them to think about more, just to make sure they have the right idea of what they are doing. For example, at one point, my son had two very different reactions to two different candies, yet he gave them the same score in the “Tastiness” category. When I noticed that, I asked him why he gave both candies the same score if he really liked one and really didn’t like the other. This question was intentional to make him think about what he was doing and to check his work as he went along, not because I thought something was wrong. If he had replied with a reasonable explanation for why both candies received the same score, we would have left it alone and moved on, because his answer would have shown me he understood the main point of this activity, whether or not I agreed with the number he chose. In our case, he immediately said, “Oh no, I didn’t mean to give the same score. This candy should be a 2, and this one should be an 8.”
Second Graphing Tip
You can do this activity with a stronger focus on either quantitative or qualitative aspects. In super basic terms, quantitative means numbers and facts, qualitative means more detailed explanations. I have a chatterbox who cannot answer a basic question with less than 1000 words. It was a challenge for him to give only quantitative information. He wanted to talk about every candy in every category, and as much as I love spending time with him, I don’t have that kind of time in my life. If your kiddo is opposite mine, they may do better with this activity, giving as much detail as possible. This can help expand their vocabulary, find new descriptions, and challenge them to explain their thinking.
When we finally finished tasting, it was time to graph the data. Here’s where the real nerdy stuff started to come out! We first had to talk about why he would be doing this two times. No, not because I’m trying to create an overachiever, but because I know how important it is for him to know multiple ways of doing something. While he was familiar with Google Sheets from school, I also had him create a paper version without tech. (It reminded me of being told as a kid why we have to know multiplication tables, because we wouldn’t always have calculators in our pockets! I just phrased this more as, “What if you forget your charger and the computer dies? You still have to turn in something.”)
On the paper version, he colored in the corresponding score for each candy. In the digital version, he focused on entering the corresponding score in the correct column/row before pressing “create a bar graph.”
Paper and Digital Graphs
For my kid, looking back and forth between the paper rubric and Google Sheets to enter the data was too hard without frequently losing his place. I read the numbers aloud in a category while he typed the number he heard into the correct cell. (Just to add another layer of fun, I decided to switch languages while calling out the numbers he was typing without warning. Muhahahahaha!)
After the graphs were created, I asked him what he noticed. “Which candy did you rank the highest in the ‘Tastiness’ category? Which candy did you rank the lowest in the ‘Meltiness’ category? How do you know?”
That last question is really important because it reveals their thinking. It makes sure they aren’t making lucky guesses. And it can reveal where they may have some misconceptions and need to review something with you or their teacher.
Make Learning Fun
Giving your big kid time to play with their food with these math activities not only keeps math fun and approachable, but it also creates a way for you to help your child reinforce important concepts without feeling like homework. Have a tasty time together!
