Chocolate Math

Chocolate Math

Yikes!  It's been almost six weeks since my last post, but this one is a good one.  It is all about a recent theme, which was CHOCOLATE, with a healthy serving of MATH.  (It's kind of funny how often the latter ties in with the former.)   For a quick overview, feel free to check out my Chocolate Activities Preschool Board on Pinterest.

To get ready for the week, I went out and bought plenty of chocolate.  Chocolate chips, cocoa powder, hot chocolate mix, Hershey's syrup, and several kinds of Hershey's Kisses! The Kisses came in lots of colors for the holiday season, so it was easy to play a sorting/counting game with them.  I took handfuls of candy and let the children put them in a different tray for each color. Then we lined them up to compare which had the most and the fewest.  Then we practiced our counting words as each child got a few Kisses and attempted one to one correspondence.

(via http://www.hersheys.com/kisses/seasonal/holiday-products.aspx)

I also put together a board game that I got for free on TeachersPayTeachers.  I don't have a color printer, so I added my own colors to the game board and the game pieces, and glued them to colorful construction paper.  Then I made some number cards to draw from, to assist with number identification.

We also used some Christmas themed number puzzles to help with our focus on math, which I printed on card stock (B&W printer again).  I also added some color to the pages (ex. all of the number 3 pieces had blue accents), as some of my learners don't yet have a strong number sense, and I wanted them to be able to match the puzzle pieces in various ways.

I also got this cool craftivity from TeachersPayTeachers, which we put together on construction paper.  Rather than printing onto colored paper, I had my preschoolers color their mug, cut out their pieces, and paint the hot chocolate portion with chocolate paint (shaving cream and cocoa powder)!  This project looked unique and smelled GREAT!

I also made Chocolate Sparkle Dough for use with play dough counting mats from Pre-Kinders.  We had a lot of fun using our fine motor skills to knead the cocoa powder into our store bought Play-Doh, and picking up the gold glitter I sprinkled onto the table.  The counting mats I slid into sheet protectors, and let the kids try to form the correct number of play-dough ornaments onto the tree!  

Overall, it was a great unit, and I am so grateful that there are people out there creative enough to make some of these activities, and generous enough to share them!  Do you have other resources that could tie into a Math/Chocolate Unit?  Be sure to comment!