Candy Corn Learning

       I introduced Claire to candy corn last month and, in an effort to prevent her from devouring the entire bowl in one sitting, decided to use her newfound love to promote a little learning action.  Pretty evil genius of me, but I feel no guilt. 

       First we worked on math skills.  I took a sheet of paper and drew lines to divide it into six boxes.  Next I labeled each box with a number at the top: 0 - 5.  In each box, I drew triangles the size of candy corn.  See where this is going? 

(I would like to note two things about this picture that I love: our awesome chocolate lab in the background forcing himself to not look at the candy he can't have, and how perfectly straight all of her candy corns are.  She took special care to make sure they were just so!) 

 

       Claire loved doing this!  It was a fun way to practice numbers and values.  At first we practiced counting and placing candy corn together, but it didn't take her long to get the idea.  Especially when she realized that after she finished numbers 0-5, she got to eat one piece of candy.  (That was my rule, and she surprisingly stuck to it!  Most of the time...)

 

       While we worked on this, I thought of an easy way to get some practice in with letter sounds, too.  I took another sheet of paper and wrote out the five letters of the month (in the toddler curriculum I made, we focus on five-letter groupings with one vowel in each group).  Then we just played!  I'd ask her to put a candy on the letter that makes the [letter sound] sound, continuing on until all the letters were topped with perfectly straight candy corns.  If you do this, don't forget to include all the sounds for each letter, of course.    

  

      

        Both of these activities are (basically) free, fun, and can be done a few minutes here or there.  All positives in my book.  Happy fall!