Halloween math activities

Before you eat all your trick-or-treat candies, let’s count, measure, estimate and graph them with these fun Halloween math activities.

Fun Halloween math activities

When we add fun, hands-on play using interesting materials the whole atmosphere of our math learning changes. We have smiles, and giggles, and people jumping to volunteer to answer the next question.

Use these Halloween math activities to explore sorting, counting, estimating, graphing and more.

Materials needed:

:: Halloween candy (or other small items such as Halloween erasers, decorations, or pictures of bats / pumpkins / ghosts etc.)

:: paper and pencils

:: sticky notes

:: tape measures

:: weighing scales

Estimating activity

Show your children all the Halloween candy you have in a glass jar or a big bowl, all jumbled up together.

Have your children estimate what the answers to your math investigations will be:

How many candies do you think we have in total?

Which kind of candy do you think we have the most of?

How many of each kind of candy do you think we have?

If we lay out all the candy in long line, how long do you think the line will be?

How much do you think the candy weighs?

You can record the predictions on the chalk board or on a piece of paper.

Being able to make a realistic estimate is an important skills, and can act as a useful ‘sense check’ then you are checking your calculations later.

Decide if you are going to work individually, in pairs, teams or as a whole class, and equip each group with paper and pencils to records all of their measurements.

Sorting, counting and addition activities

Begin by sorting out all the candy into types and count how many of each type you have.

You can use tallies, a table or a bar graph to record how many of each kind you have. Add up each type to work out how many you have in total.

Were your estimates correct?

Measuring activity

Next, lay out all the candy in one long line and use a tape measure to work out the length.

Is the line longer or shorter than your estimate? By how much? Who got closest to the correct answer? What’s the difference between their estimate and the correct answer?

Venn diagram activity

Make a Venn diagram using some/all of your candy types. You might compare colours or have circles for chocolate, round, and orange, for example.

Graphing activity

Use the candy to create a big bar graph on the floor. Graphs are useful for conveying detailed information is a clear, visual way. Your graph will make it obvious which type of candy you have the most of – so much easier to see than when they were in the jar.

Use sticky notes to add the details to the axes on your graph: the type of chocolate along the x axis and numbers up the y axis.

Have your children ask and answer a few questions using the graph, for example:

:: Which type of candy do we have the most of?

:: What’s the difference between the number of pumpkin candy and the number of eyeball candy?

Weighing activity

Use kitchen scales to calculate how much the candy weighs.

Did anyone estimate correctly? Who was the closest? How much were they out by?

Addition and subtraction activity

You can also try my spooky sums for Halloween addition and subtraction practice.

Roll a pumkin activity

Try my pumpkin rolling game to practice math facts.

Halloween science activities using candy

Alternatively you might like to use your treats for these Halloween science experiments using candy.