Can you believe Halloween is just right around the corner? What an exciting time for children and parents alike. This is a great time to work off of children’s excitement and use this towards learning math. There are so many opportunities to incorporate Halloween-themed activities at home. This may help concepts stick better, since the excitement and motivation are at an all-time high!
Let’s take a look at some fun ways you can practice some math skills at home.
- Candy Memory Game
We all know that after Halloween kids have SO much candy! Consider using some of the candy for a memory game. This game idea is from a great blog, Kids Activities Blog. The set up for this game is pretty simple. Choose an even amount of candy to use for this game and put a small sticker on the bottom. When setting up your candy you will need to have two different piles. One with the equation and one with the answer. This way your child doesn’t pick up two equation candies. On the bottom of each sticker, this is where you write an equation or the answer. You can choose to use any operation you would like for this game: addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. You could even use equivalent fractions for older students. To play this game, each student will flip over two pieces of candy and look to see if they have a matching equation and answer.
- Candy Graphing
Another fun activity is making bar graphs with Halloween candy. To do this, have your child grab an amount of candy. Help your child think of ways to sort the candy. This could be by type, color, size, ex. Have your child graph the number of each kind. You may have to help your child count by 2s or 5s if they are using a large amount of candy. For even more fun, check out how Busy Toddler uses painter tape to create a life-sized bar graph! How fun!
- Bone Bridge
This last activity comes from Plans for a Better Tomorrow Blog is a truly hands on activity for your child. This is an activity that can be adapted dependent on your child’s age and ability level. For this activity you will need a few materials: cotton swabs, clothes pins, rubber bands, and pumpkin-shaped candies. In this activity, children build a “bone bridge” with q-tips to see how many candy pumpkins it can hold. Check out the video below to see how to complete the project as well as different adaptations that can be made for your child.
