Halloween treats | 4 Mothers

What to do with all of that candy that is about to infiltrate your gluten-free, sugar-free, locavore pantry? Why make a bar graph of course! I have posted about this before, but bar graphs are a great way to make a meaningful connection between math (data management and interpretation) and every day life.

Start by dumping all of the candy into a pile. This is fun for the obvious reason: seeing a mountain of candy! But ask your kids if just by glancing they can see any natural groups. Once they’ve determined the grouping, start the sorting. Sorting is a great activity for the littlest ones and possibly the older, more experienced ones can oversee and make corrections when necessary.

Ask lots of questions during this part of the activity. Do you think we have enough to make a group? Why or why not? What are some other ways we can sort the candy? Could we sort by chocolate, candy and chips?

Once the candy has been sorted, write the title of each group (for example: gum, suckers, Rockets, etc.) on a sticky note.

Then the children count each pile. This is where you can encourage skip-counting by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s. After the tally, record the number on the corresponding sticky note.

Now it’s time to create the graph. Ask your child to recall the components of a graph: title, X and Y axis labels, data labels, and scale. Listen to their reasoning for choosing the scale. When working on this graph my boys engaged in a discussion about the best way to capture the data because the smallest group was the Play-Doh with 2 and the largest group was the Chocolate Bars with 125. That’s quite a range!

Get out the ruler, the pencil and the colour pencils to finish the graph.

Now here’s a problem: What do we do once we start eating the candy?

“Is this really half-eaten candy sitting in your cupboard?” Nathalie asked me this as she reached for a glass.

“Oh. That. Yup. I guess I should toss it.”

“You can actually have half-eaten candy in your house?”

I have, what one would call, a non-committal relationship with food. In truth, it wasn’t until I became a mom and other human beings depended on me for food that I actually started to care about what I ate. Before that, I ate to survive and barely gave it a second thought. Days would go by before I would realize that all I had eaten was toast and fruit. Rest assured all you parents of picky eaters, miracles do happen and I now joyfully eat a variety of foods.

Junk food has always been a cohabiter of mine. I grew up with a junk food cupboard (always accessible, rarely pilfered) and there is one in our house, accessible to the boys (most often ignored; stale treats are regularly purged into the garbage). I can take it or leave it.

Until I have to take it.

“And so I just said, fuck it, and made the commitment to finish the bag!” – Beth-Anne Jones on inhaling a large bag of peanut M&Ms after a seven year hiatus of all things peanutty and chocolate.

And now I present to you the list of treats I have gorged on and never want to eat again and/or avoid like the plague because I don’t want to go down that sweet, salty road to stomachache hell (again):

World Famous Chocolate Covered Almonds

I bought $20 worth from my cousin after my boyfriend bought a box and refused to share them with me. He ate one box and I ate however many $20 bought me. We got married and share everything except chocolate-covered almonds.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

Third-year university. 150 Halloween sized peanut-butter cups. No trick-or-treaters knocked on our door. Three hours later: nothing but wrappers. Side note: this was a team effort.

Krispy Kreme Glazed Donuts

After making their much-anticipated Canadian debut, I ate 6 glazed donuts in a 12-hour period. I have never met fried dough that I didn’t like but K.K. and I parted ways after they pulled out of the donut game (in my neighbourhood) – lucky for my jeans and me.

President’s Choice Chocolate Fudge Crackle (Vanilla)

There have been wars waged in this house over proper scooping etiquette. Dig out the chocolaty goodness or equal mix of ice cream and crackle? It’s no longer allowed across the threshold because someone can’t control himself/herself when it’s in the freezer. . . it’s not me.

Coconut-filled Hershey’s Kisses

My latest obsession, not yet available in Canada. This is what I have consumed while writing this post.

The bag is empty. I can rest now.

How about you? What is your weakness? Does all of this treat talk have you thinking about Halloween? Follow 4Mothers1Blog on Pinterest for easy-peasy Halloween décor, costumes you can wear outside of the boudoir and baked goods that even I could make!

Thanks for the images:

http://www.davidbordwell.com, http://www.recipegirl.com, http://www.theredheadriter.com, http://www.candywarehouse.com