Candy Favorites is delighted to be partnering with Chronicle Books to announce the release of Candy 1 to 20. This colorful new board book, published by Chronicle Books, uses vibrant photos of classic candies to teach basic counting skills.
To celebrate Candy 1 to 20, we'll be giving away 5 copies of the book. Each of them is signed by the author! To enter, just share your experience of candy as a teaching tool.
Did you learn probability through the colors of M&M's? Are you a teacher who uses the squares of Hershey Bars to teach fractions? Or was your favorite candy used as a reward as you learned important life lessons?
Since candy is a powerful motivator and positive reinforcement for all ages, the possibilities are endless. Send us your most memorable candy-fueled learning experiences, and you'll be entered to win one of 5 signed copies of Candy 1 to 20. You can
email us or submit the form below.
Winners will be announced Friday, October 28.
Submit Your Story!
Is it “9 Men’s Morris” OR "Medieval Candy Game?
I am in the 5th Grade. We are currently studying Medieval Times and our teacher lets us play the game 9 Men’s Morris with candy. We use candy corn and/or skittles to represent the game pieces. Everyone in my class is motivated to play. The game is very fun and the winner gets to keep the candy. I can’t think of a better game or a better outcome!
The story I want to tell is about a Sunday School Class I was teaching. It was more boys than girls. I had to have an incentive or something to keep them interested in getting up and coming to Sunday School. So, I made a chart for each child’s attendance. Every month that they didn’t miss a Sunday, I would give them a bag of candy. Let me tell you they watch the stars on the attendance board! They loved it and it worked. They didn’t want to miss and let anyone get ahead of them and we had a good class too with regular attendance. I also work at an elementary school. When I need papers back that I have a hard time getting. I tell them if you bring your paper back to me you can go to the candy jar. It works!!
A Giant Kiss
One of life’s most important lessons learned from a piece of candy. No, not my colors, numbers, or ABC’s; but, Rejection, good old-fashioned Rejection.
Picture this: 5th grade – a bespecaled, cross-eyed, unathletic, pudgey little boy swooning over the tall, gorgeous, popular, quite pubescent girl. Let’s call her Jillian. Valentine’s Day was fast approaching. How would I finally attract her attention? Weeks worth of allowance shoved in my pocket, I donned my taupe Member’s Only jacket, mounted my 10-speed Schwinn and road to Joel’s, the local candy purveyor. I plunked down my cash and road back home with the world’s biggest Hershey Kiss in tow. One of those giant 7 oz. jobs! I could barely contain myself. The days until Feb. 14th dragged like an Arctic winter. Finally, I stowed it in my backpack and brought it to school. My heart raced through penmanship, spelling, and math. Recess had arrived. The time was now. I awkwardly stumbled through the gaggle of 5th grade girls to Jillian. In a moment of pure eloquence, as I shoved the giant Hershey Kiss to her face and I uttered, not a Shakespearean sonnet, but a feeble “Here.” The echoes of the subsequent laughter still languish in my ears. I had not even turned on my Keds to flee and Jillian had tossed that giant Kiss to one of her friends. “Here you can have it,” she said. Her smug smirk still vivid in my eyes. For a short moment that giant Hershey Kiss was filled with hopes and dreams – a life with Jillian. Shattered in an instant, those dreams ruined by the toss of the giant Kiss.
CANDY!! "¦ the perfect incentive to help students remember their library card! As the librarian in a small elementary school, my candy of choice was Jolly Ranchers. This tempting little bribe worked quite well for many years. Until last year.
Over a period of just a couple weeks, two students on the playground accidentally swallowed their Jolly Rancher. Tragedy was averted, but it did involve the Heimlich maneuver! Last summer, during our Red Cross training, the instructor gave us scenarios to act out, to see how we would handle the emergency. My group came to me with this: “A student was running down the library stairs and fell, now he has stopped breathing, what do we do?” Of course we all got a laugh when the alleged culprit was a Jolly Rancher in his throat! But also a serious lesson"¦ I now have gum drops on my desk for those younger kids!
One of my most memorable candy stories was not as much a learning experience for my nephew as it was for us grown-ups. One winter, we were staying at an indoor waterpark. When we were not swimming, we were playing in the arcade. One of my nephew’s favorite games involved a dump truck and a candy-o-meter. The smaller dump trucks could be manuvered to drop small pieces of candy into the prize slot. The candy-o-meter kept track of the plays and the amount won. When the highest point was reached on the candy-o-meter, a large dump truck would drop the grand prize. The grand prize was a bucket of candy of all shapes and sizes. We ‘adults’ told my nephew that he could only have 1 piece of candy before supper. He pulled out his piece and to our surprise, it was one-pound Hershey bar!! He exclaimed “I have my piece”! We then had to explain that the pounder was more than just 1 piece. It did help us ‘grown-ups’ see things more from a child’s perspective. What a nice memory.