My Preschooler Loves Math: Ideas for Learning Math with Candy & Snack Foods

Each day my three year old sit down together for snack. In addition to enjoying snack time, I have found a way to incorporate conversation and a math game. Because it is in an informal setting, there is no pressure on my daughter and she just thinks this is the way we eat our snacks.

You can incorporate math into all seasons and all types of snacks. You can teach your child about fractions by taking apart sections of an orange, or cutting apart a round cookie. Another great way to teach about fractions could be done by baking a cake, and then cutting it into sections. You can also make a pizza and decorate different parts with various toppings. I really like the idea of turning it into a whole project with my daughter. We prep the food, we talk about math and then we enjoy our snack.

In our home we do a lot of graphing activities and sorting projects. We sort different pieces of colored cereal or different parts of a trail mix into like groups. We have created small graphs in which we graph the number of red, blue and green cereal pieces. We don't always do math with candy and junk food. Sometimes we do this type of math with nuts and raisins. Your child will appreciate your involvement and the fun of math playtime.

We have also done measuring projects. We will measure out different cup and tablespoon amounts of cereal to talk about the different units of measurement. We have a small plastic ruler and I've had my daughter measure pretzel rods that I have broken into different lengths. One time we measured Twizzler licorice pieces and she was really excited!

You can also get involved in the different holidays with the idea of math play and snacks. For Valentines Day, we have been counting with different conversation heart candies. We play a game where we have to fill snack bags for her friends and she has to count out the amounts to fill the bags. For Christmas, I had my daughter count out cookies to fill cookie platters for neighbors. You will really get creative when start to think of all of the ways to work in math.

I have gotten a variety of resources to enhance our math play at our local dollar store. We found a plastic preschool friendly ruler. We also found some large dice which we use to roll and then figure out how many snacks we can eat. We also found little containers and bags which are perfect for counting our snacks into.

As a parent, you can turn simple moments in the day into learning experiences. I hope you enjoy these activities and let me know if you have any other ideas to share with me!