Edible Manipulatives

Have you ever counted how many m&m's are in a bag? Try it with your children, preschoolers on up to fifth graders. They'll love it! Make an estimate. How many do you think are in the bag. Let the children guess. Then count them and see how close you were. This is hands on counting that younger children really enjoy.

Next, sort the colors. Can your child name each color? Count how many of each color. Which color has the least? Which has the most? Do any two colors have the same amount? Help the child count to find out.

You can count out 100 m&m's from a big bag. Then count how many of each color. You can make graphs of the results. Count another 100 and see if you get the same amount of each color again. This a simple and fun discovery project. You can use your edible manipulatives to teach an endless amount of math concepts.

Use m&m's or any small candies as manipulatives to teach many lessons right from your child's lesson book. And the best part, you guessed it, they get to eat them when your done!