Guest Author - Alissa Moy
If you celebrate Halloween, or if your child gets candy from a Fall Festival, you are probably getting prepared for how to deal with the excess treats. While some candy is fun and a treat for all children, homeschoolers or not, the massive amounts of treats children collect today can be overwhelming. What can you do to utilize the candy your homeschooler collects? Here are some ways to incorporate this extra candy into your homeschool lessons:
Science is a perfect subject to use candy for experiments. Challenge your homeschooler to create a hypothesis about what the insides of a particular candy is like, and then use a variety of tools to teast out this theory. For example, a microscope can be used to prepare slides of various candy layers to examine. A scientific scale can measure the grams of various candy, and don't forget to have your child note their observations in a science journal. A magnifying glass can be utillized to view various candies up close, too. Your homeschooler can document their ideas through drawings of these candies, when using the magnification and without. Assist your child in testing the properties of the candy when melted, frozen, or put in water.
Math can be sweeter with candy graphs! Using M&M's, Skittles, Sweet Tarts or Reeses Pieces graph the colors in each bag. Before you start the project be sure to have your homeschooler hypothesize how many of each color your child thinks a particular bag will contain. Ask your homeschooler which color they think is most popular, and how many more of that color they expect to find. Chart your information on simple graph paper, which you and your homeschooler can ready prior to the activity, listing the colors contained in each bag. Try using at least three bags for this project, as that would be a fair assessment for color frequency. After recording the results on the graphs, conclude which colors were most popular. Use a circle graph to chart the percentages of color amounts. Find an average number for each color from three of the bags. For younger children have them count up each color and then create hands on problems for them to figure out, using the candy as manipulatives.
Language Arts can be incorporated into extra candy by the use of creative writing. Have your child close their eyes, or use a blindfold, and examine a piece of candy using their other senses. Do this with the candy wrapped and unwrapped. Have them remove the blindfold or open their eyes and write a description of what they sensed, and what candy they thought it was. Next have your homeschooler write a paragraph or two on this experiment, and what they sensed along the way. Have them record whether they were surprised by what they thought the candy was, or if they were correct in what they sensed.
Using Halloween or Fall Festival candy in educational ways can be not only fun, but also homeschool friendly. As homeschoolers we have liberties that private and public schools cannot take, like eating candy in school!