We generally do a scripted math lesson four days a week, but I like to leave another day for some fun math activities. I've found that my daughter has really enjoyed math more when I don't push it and make it FUN! The more I homeschool, the more confident I am in branching away from our math books and trying my "own thing".
{Saxon Math is the spine for our homeschool math, but I do think it's fun to spice it up every now and then!}
I decided to make our own math lesson with some Brach's Autumn Candy Mix -- I love that stuff! I wish you could have seen the look on my children's faces when I took the candy out of the grocery bag, because I never buy candy!
Graphing With Autumn Candy
Originally, I had thought we would make this a simple graphing exercise for my five year old son, and that I would make the graphing a little harder for my nine year old daughter. I downloaded a very nice customizable bar graph form. We did the simple bar graph based on how many pumpkins, and different types of candy corn they had, and it took about 5 minutes.
Well, I didn't have to think much farther, because then my daughter suggested we graph it again, but graph what they had EATEN - clever! So, I let them each eat a few pieces out of each group and then graph what they had eaten.... sneaky little kids, huh? At one point my daughter even ate the tip off of a candy corn and graphed 1/3 of a piece. I was impressed with her willingness to explore the possibilities in math.
After this I told my son to make some addition and subtraction problems with the candy and he did a great job. He also played with the pieces and made some patterns.
My daughter wrote addition, subtraction, and multiplication word problems based on the number of pieces she had in her piles.
Throughout the lesson I would ask how many of a certain kind they had... then would say "If you gave mom six of those candy corns, how many would you have left?" (that way I got to eat some, too) Or, "If you divide the candy you have left between all three of us, how many would each person get?". The possibilities are endless... just use your imagination and have fun with it!
Of course I let them eat their candy when they were finished. Surprisingly, my son didn't finish his and told me "I think I'm about full up on this candy for this month!". Too cute. It's times like this that I love homeschooling... we had FUN, learned a lot, and got to eat candy!
For More Autumn Fun: