I really enjoy Halloween, not just because of all the sugary sweets, but because of the excitement of dressing up and the sense of community when we take our kids trick-or-treating around our neighbourhood. Once the cold weather hits, people like to go into hibernation, so it’s a great opportunity to visit with our neighbours!
B wasn’t particularly ecstatic about wearing his costume, but he did end up loving trick-or-treating!
My bugs collected A LOT of candy this year! One way to distract them from actually eating all their candy was to do a math activity with the candy. Here’s what we did:
Candy Math!
When the boys returned from trick-or-treating, I asked M to guess/ estimate how many candies he thought were in his bag. His answer was a solid ’20’, which was kind of funny, because M thinks this number is HUGE! After making his estimation, I had M dump his entire bag, and he began to count.
The final count was about 4 X the amount he estimated…
That night, I managed to whittle the boys down to choosing 2 treats each before bagging up the rest and sending them to bed.
Unfortunately (but not surprising in the least), candy was still on their mind come morning. Instead of requesting their usual breakfast order of waffles and Cheerios, the boys begged for chocolate and suckers… it was worth a shot I guess. You can’t blame them for trying ;). After scarfing down their waffles I asked M if he wanted to sort his treats and he replied with an emphatic, ‘YES!’
I got out 4 bowls: 1 for chocolate, 1 for chips, 1 for suckers and 1 for other. M and B were both eager to get sorting!
And when they were finished sorting, I had them tally each of the bowls. M was certain that the chips would have the greatest number because they took up the most space in the bowl…
But it was chocolate that won by a landslide! YES!
Then, we took the numbers and plugged them into EXCEL to create a visual pie graph of the results:
I explained to M how to read the pie graph, and then rewarded the boys’ hard work with a couple of treats!
Tomorrow I’m thinking of building some candy towers :).
Hope you had a great Halloween!
Click the link for more math activities.
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