Is there a lesson in there?

If your kids are anything like mine, they are completely FIXATED on their booty of Halloween candy they brought home last night.

So, how do we turn this dentist's delight into a learning experience for our children?

And I'm not talking about teaching nutrition here (although that would be a good lesson, too). I'm talking MATH CONCEPTS!

Here are a few ideas:

First, my kids have a 5-pieces-of-candy-a-day limit. (You may find that's too much, but in my opinion, they faster they get rid of this stuff, the better!). So this morning, they each got to select FIVE pieces of candy. 1-2-3-4-5. They chose the candy they wanted and counted it out. Counting, 1-2-3-4-5.

But now that they've selected the 5 pieces they will eat for the day, there are still lots more fun learning ideas inside that orange plastic bucket!

I had Luke (age 3) pour all his candy out onto the floor, and then he sorted out all the suckers.

Then, I had him sort the candy by colors: Orange candy wrappers in one pile; brown candy wrappers in one pile; red candy wrappers in one pile, etc.

The older kids (11, 9, and 6) were able to sort their's even further...chocolate candy in one pile, suckers in one pile, fruit flavored candy in another pile.

Another idea....M&Ms and Smarties and Skittles are fun to sort and count. Sort by color, then count how many of each color are in the bag.

Then eat them!!!

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