Making Math Fun - Autumn Candy Mix Math

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:

Fun with Math at Lunch

It's Tuesday, and I love linking up with Sue for The Hip Homeschool Hop. Check out how other homeschoolers are doing this week by clicking her button above!

Yesterday my children were apparently bored with my offering of a peanutbutter and honey sandwich, yogurt and fruit for lunch. I had to hop on the phone as it was approaching lunchtime, and when I got off (about 20 minutes later) they had come up with this:

A sign taped to our kitchen island stating our kitchen was now "McDonalds"

A menu written by my five year old:

(I love the "dezzerts", don't you?)

And a menu written by my nine year old:

I was proud of her spelling, but notice she couldn't spell "Koolaid" correctly - probably because we have it on very rare occasions.

I pulled some chicken nuggets out of the freezer and put them in the oven, set out some yogurt and fruit and kids ordered from me. Of course they had candy from their store for dessert. We added up prices and talked about change. Voila! A real world math lesson created by my children. I love it!

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Making Math Fun - Our Candy Shop

One of my big goals this year is to make math FUN. A few weeks ago I was looking for ideas online, and came across the site, Making Learning Fun. They had a great idea for setting up a candy shop, and had some printable cards with pictures, prices, and even circles to put down the appropriate amount of money. You can download them here - click on Candy Money Counting Cards and you will get to the link. I laminated the cards because I hope to make this a Friday event (if everything has gone well during the week).

Yesterday we set up the candy shop! We had lots of fun - but just so you know, I did limit the candy they could eat to 2 pieces, but they could save up the candy they bought for later times. We used play money and I gave each child $4 to spend.

Here is what some of the cards in our store looked like:

Each child got a turn to be the "cashier" - learning to key in $.03 for a Tootsie Roll and $.13 for a piece of gum was a good lesson for both of my children - their first instinct was to just punch "3" and "13". I know this is old-fashioned because today it's all barcodes! We had ten different candies to choose from.

 My son loved the activity because he was acting quite official, and my daughter delighted in teaching him how to make change, which in turn reinforced her ability to make change. Clever.

Daddy even visited the store - he was taking a day off from work to pressure wash the house, so he was stopping in on breaks to visit the candy store. We also invited a four year old friend from across the street to come to our candy store. I think next time we do this I'll let the kids invite a few more people. Our friend paid for the candy, but then we gave him his money back. :-)


I bet you could even do this same thing with trinkets from the dollar store and link it to a reward system during your homeschool week. All in all, it was a great way to learn some real world math and have FUN!

Do your kids like to play store? Do they have a cash register? It's one of our favorite homeschool math tools!