Home-based Halloween-Themed
Activities to Do with Your Child
Warm-up:
Halloween will be here soon. Try to come up with ideas for incorporating mathematics into Halloween at your home.
CLASSIFY the goodies—determine useful categories, such as
“HARD CANDIES”
“CONTAINS PEANUTS”
“CONTAINS CHOCOLATE” etc.
or simply “FAVORITES” and “YUCKY”
then COUNT the members of each set. Put your findings into a BAR GRAPH.
Or, if your categories overlap, make a VENN DIAGRAM to display your results.
Have each child count his/her treats. (COUNTING)
If more than one child went trick-or-treating, ask:
If more than one child went trick-or-treating, ask:
Who has more? (COMPARISON)
How many more? (SUBTRACTION)
If you put all the treats together and took fair shares, how many treats would each of you get? (ADDITION, DIVISION)
If you are allowed to eat 3 treats a day, how many days will your treats last? (DIVISION)
When will you run out of treats? (CALENDAR MATH)
When will you run out of treats? (CALENDAR MATH)
Display ENTHUSIASM for these mathematics activities!! Math is fun!!
More NUMBER ideas:
ESTIMATION
How many treats should we buy for trick-or-treaters who come to our door?
How many treats do you predict you’ll get if we go door-to-door on our street?
How many seeds are there in a pumpkin?
MONEY
Make a Halloween budget — cost of treats, jack o’lantern, materials for making a costume, etc.
In the supermarket:
purchasing treats to hand out – calculate price per treat in a bag, buy enough treats, stay within the budget
ingredients for pumpkin pie – check amounts against what the recipe requires
paying for the groceries, checking the change
purchasing treats to hand out – calculate price per treat in a bag, buy enough treats, stay within the budget
paying for the groceries, checking the change
GEOMETRY AND MEASUREMENT
Carving a jack o’lantern — circles for eyes, triangle for nose, etc.; symmetry; measure diameter and circumference of the pumpkin
Baking a pumpkin pie — measure all the ingredients
Sewing a costume — measure your child, measure fabric, etc.
DATA AND CHANCE
Keep track of the costumes that come to your door — which costume was most popular? Use a tally.
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| (children's faces were deliberately deleted) |
Make a graph.
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