Halloween Candy: Creative Ways to Use Them

Now that Halloween is over, what are you going to do with all those candies. Between the candies my kiddos got from a harvest party and the ones we bought for trick-or-treaters, we have three beach buckets left. I could save all the candies and let them eat it, or, being a homeschool mom, I wanted to use it as a teaching tool.  This subject is not on math, science, or health, but on the act of service.  I wanted to get the kids started into this holiday season with the mind set of serving others rather than receiving.   There is a program called Halloween Candy Buyback where local dentists can register and buy back Halloween candy from neighborhood kids.  The dentists then send them to the troops overseas. I just thought that this is just a great way for me to teach the kids about serving others and about the men and women in our armed forces, our American Heroes.

Here’s what you need to do.  Go to Halloween Candy Buyback. Once you’re at the site, type in your zip code to find a local dentist in your neighborhood. Give the dentists a call for their specific times that they’ve set aside for this event. Then have your kids pack up the candies and visit the dentist with them.

Wait…before dropping off those candies, here are some fun learning activities you might want to consider especially if you have young kids.

Buddy used those candies for his patterning lesson in math.

Both Buddy and Chico lined up those candies to make a candy graph. Since Buddy is older, I gave him harder questions as he compared the candies on his graph. With Chico, we talked about the ideas of more and less.

I asked Mei to sort the candies. I demonstrated to her by putting one of each kind of candy in each container and asked her to put the same candies in those containers. She did a great job in her sorting lesson.

There’s also counting by ones, twos, tens, even hundreds if you have that many. For language arts lessons, you might use names of the candies to reinforce letter sounds, beginning sounds or even reading all the names of the candies depending on your child’s levels. How about nutrition lesson? Learning what’s in candy might help your child understand why too much candy is not good for our bodies.

This is what our local dentist from the program gave the kids. New toothbrush and a new toy for each child and $1.00 per pound of candy (we got $8.00 back!)

Hopefully this will give you some great ideas on what to do with your Halloween candies. I’d love to hear what you do with your candies. Please share in the comment section.