Sweet Math at The Works

We have been going to The Works monthly now for a year and a half (minus the summer. They don't do homeschool days in the summer. Too bad.) We enjoy the activities, some more than others. This month was "Sweet Math," an exercise in estimation and budgeting using candy. Yes, candy. And the kids got to eat some. The moms? Not so much. But it really is about the kids, right?



There were 4 stations set up with two jars as you see above. They were for the estimation portion of the activity. The idea was to estimate how many pieces of candy were in the fuller jar, based on the knowledge provided by the other jar. The first jar contained 10 caramels, so from that you were supposed to estimate how many were in the other jar. The Kit K*t jar was the easiest. You could literally count it. The Sk*ttles jar was the hardest. The caramels and St*rburst were in the middle. Kiddo really hasn't done a lot with estimating, so it was fun to see how he worked it through.

The second portion was budgeting. Each participant was given 5 "Works bucks" and a list of candy they could buy, along with prices. This was tricky for kiddo, who has done almost no work with money and math. I had to help him out by breaking things down into terms he could understand. Once he had it all figured out, he got to go order his candy. And then eat it. Well, he got to eat a couple of pieces. He got to buy 5--too many to eat in one sitting! Kutey participated too, she picked out the candy she wanted from the choices I gave her. Then placed her order. And ate the candy. She really had no idea how it all added up, but was happy to play a little store.