Is Candy Corn Actually Good For Kids? Do the Math and See

With Halloween nearly upon us, it makes you wonder with all the
sugar in candy corn whether or not it can be good for kids.
Ironically, it just might be. Candy corn might just boost
thinking skills and improve grades! After letting them eat their
fill, have your kids use the candy corn for some math lessons.

On a very basic level, the orange, yellow, and white triangles
can help teach colors and shapes. Mix them with some M&M's for a
sorting exercise for little fingers. Have children arrange them
together to make new shapes.

Need something a little more challenging? Try using the little
candies for board game markers. Candy corn bingo is fun - with
the numbers on the grid providing answers to equations and the
candies marking the spots. Kids can graph different amounts of
candy corn. Making spinners from cardboard with the arrows
shaped like candy corn can provide another fun way of working
with numbers.

Have you ever noticed that the little pieces - if turned on their
sides - look like "greater than" or "less than" signs? Kids may
enjoy unequal equations much more if they are using candy for the
answers.

And what about some story problems? Tommy has 14 pieces of candy
corn. If he steals his sister's 8 pieces, how many will he have
in all? Since the story problem is quite versatile, candy corn
is still helpful when the degree of difficulty is stretched a
little. Maybe the kids should find the square root of the number
of pieces of candy corn that Tommy has. Or maybe Tommy's stash
of candy corn is going to grow exponentially over the entire
month of October! Lucky Tommy.

How much does each individual piece of candy corn cost? That is
a great math/life question. Which store offers the best price?
Try weighing the candy corn - or maybe try weighing the children
after they have eaten a few bags of it!

An enormous jar full of candy corn provides a great
guessing/estimating game. And the jar will be award to the
person with the closest answer. There is some mathematical way
of making a fairly accurate guess. Is the prize worth the
trouble of revisiting some old high school formulas?

Some geometry students might enjoy the Internet Math Challenge
from the University of Idaho. The problem involves pretending
the piece of candy is a perfect cone and reconfiguring its
color's dimensions. Then again, maybe "enjoy" is too strong a
word.

Math and candy corn unite in the world of fiction. Check out the
books Who Brought the Candy Corn? by Judy Ann Brown and The Candy
Corn Contest by Patricia Reilly Giff for some interesting reading
as well as exercises in logic.

Talk about brain food! Perhaps candy corn will become the poster
candy for educators everywhere. Not likely. But, hopefully,
adding a little tasteful fun to a math lesson may encourage
thinking and learning. It might also give the old excuse "the
dog ate my homework" a little more credence.

About the Author: Gaylene Davis is an ex-teacher, now a work-at-home mother tending
to her two boys. This article was originally published on
http://www.Candy-Corn.info.