It’s the day after Halloween and you’ve got a bag full of Tootsie Rolls, Dots, Jolly Ranchers, LifeSavers, Gummy Bears and Hershey bars from your trick or treating masquerades. If you are like me, you are not delighted about the prospect of your little one ingesting copious amounts of refined sugar and artificial coloring, but you hate to completely deprive him of the loot either.

Some would say you should save your candy to embellish your Gingerbread house come December. That is great idea but I find it’s hard to tell my son that he can’t enjoy the candy in some way, shape, or form now, so while I do save a large part of the stash for Gingerbread season, I also portion out a good part of the haul to use now.

So what do we do? Well, what does your child love more than candy? Playing with you! And with these activities, there is something for both of you to enjoy. I find I am best able to really connect with my children when the activity captures my imagination too. These projects did not disappoint.

The first step in your candy project is counting and sorting. This is a great way to demonstrate how we use mathematics in everyday life and allow them to flex their math muscles by asking them to sort their candy. They can do it by size, color, shape, or type. You can do it more than one time. Then they can count the pieces and you can discuss which of the piles is less than or more than the other(s).

When you have exhausted the sorting and counting game you can move on to the creation portion.

For this project you’ll need to use any “gummy candy” such as Tootie Rolls or Dots or anything that the size and consistency of a gumdrop. You’ll also need a box of toothpicks. I have done this with children as young as three, but please use your best judgment. If your child still likes to put things in their mouth (or eyes or ears for that matter!) toothpicks may not be the safest choice.

Anyway, once you have unwrapped all your gummy candy, you are only limited by your imagination. You can construct letters, numbers, shapes, houses, fences, stick figures… whatever you can fashion by sticking toothpicks in the gummies and connecting them together. My five year old did this project for 30 minutes twice this week (we went trick or treating earlier in the week). Today we brought out part of his train set and made fences, crossing gates, and a tunnel to accessorize the track! It was truly the highlight of my week to have us both so fully immersed in something together.

You can also use your candy to explore art and science themes.

Again, if you channel that creativity, there is no telling what kind of amazing creations you’ll produce. With some of the other candies you will need to alter their physical state to produce what we’re looking for. For example if you have Laffy Taffy or Airheads, unwrap them and attempt to run a pizza cutter or knife through them with your child watching. It will be difficult if not impossible. Next, heat them very gently for two to four seconds in your microwave, just long enough that they are warm and you can run your pizza cutter through them easily to make these strips. Roll the strips in your hands to make them nice and round.

Ask your child what they noticed? Was it easier to cut them after they were warmed? Another great way to demonstrate how science is part of everyday life.

Stash those miniature chocolate bars in the freezer for awhile until they are good and frozen. Then place them in a Ziploc bag and smash away with your meat mallet or even just the back of wooden spoon. What child doesn’t love to SMASH with wild abandon?

Sort your pulverized candy by color or texture and let the art emerge!

For our art project we made a little garden. The pulverized chocolate was the soil, the smashed Jolly Ranchers serves as the grass, the Laffy Taffy became the flowers. We even smashed a blue Jolly Rancher to make it “rain” in the garden.

Here are a few other fun “art + candy = fun” ideas I collected from the Internet:

• Creating with Candy
• Candy Critters
• Candy Masks

These activities were really engaging for both of us and enabled us to “enjoy” the candy without “ingesting” it! In all these activities, he only ate one piece of candy the entire time. I think he was just so immersed in the project he didn’t even think about eating it.

That’s what I call a win – win!

Happy Halloween!

Filed under: Kindergarten, education, fall, preschool-age, seasonal