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!
I am a teacher and use candy as a motivator in the room. I give smarties on test days and tootsie roll pops as rewards. My favorite lesson is with m and m candies when we graph and do fractions, decimals and per cents for a 7th grade math lesson. They use extimation,line graphs,measurement,fractions,decimals and per cents all with that little bag of candy. When they are all done, they can eat the candy. A lesson they all love.
My candy story is short and simple. I have three children of my own (all in their twenties now) and I have been a registered home childcare provider for twenty years.I have always used MandM chocolate candies to teach the children colors and counting. It works and they love the reward. I have had some of my former daycare children tell me they teach their own kids now with the M and M candies as a learning tool.
I have six children. I homeschool all six for different reasons. I always tell my children that eating a lot of candy isn’t very healthy for them. As we were doing our work one morning, I saw one of my children with a handful of M & M’s. I said why do you have all of those M & M’s and where did you get them? His reply was… “They are over there in the candy dish, and I’m helping Eli learn her subtraction.” He continued to say, " See, if Eli has 10 M & M’s and I take 4, then she only has 6 left." He worked all the way down to zero! Pretty smart kiddo-don’t you think? Well, it worked! She’s very good at her subtraction, but she would rather work on her addition, if you know what I mean! I love candy, and didn’t realize just how much I have around the house until then. So now I teach my kids that candy is okay- as long as we brush our teeth, and most definitely do other things to stay healthy and active! We continue to use candy as a math tool as well as bribery!!!!
My candy story is a little different. When I was born, my parents were going to name me "Dolores" for my grandmother. But Grammie said “Oh, no. Name her for something like chocolate candy.” So I was named Candace, but everyone has always called me Candy.
I teach 7th grade science and one of the topics we cover is Chemistry. Chemistry can be a tough subject for some kids. I know it was always difficult for me when I was in school. When we are talking about Elements, Atoms, Compounds, Molecules and and Symbols I use candy to help teach the topic! We make candy compounds!
The students have a variety of different candies. The first thing we do is discuss what a symbol is and how we can represent the different candy with a symbol. Ex: Hershey Kisses would be Hk. Skittles would be S. Then we discuss how on the periodic table the elements are also represented with symbols. Ex: Oxygen is O. After we have our symbols we put the create compounds and molecules using the candy. We could put 2 skittles and 1 hershey kiss together and the formula would be S2Hk (subscript on the 2). We then discuss how there are 2 skittles so there are 2 atoms of skittles in the compound. There is only 1 hershey kiss so there is only 2 atom of hershey kiss. We do this for a variety of different examples and use the candy as a tool to help understand some ideas that are a little difficult to understand without having a visual model to look at.
The kids LOVE this activity because not only does it make chemistry a little easier to understand, but they get to eat the candy after! I love this activity because I immediately have their attention if there is candy involved and sometimes getting the attention of a middle schooler is not the easiest thing to do! Learning can be fun and candy helps it be fun… and Yummy!