Candy Corn Math Activities

Here’s a collection of super fun candy corn math activities for grades 1 – 3 (ages 6 – 8).

Nothing says fall like CANDY CORN! It’s iconic, it’s everywhere, and it tastes gross, haha.

We were not very tempted to actually eat the candy corn while working on these activities, but if you have kids that want to eat it, you can go about it in a couple different ways.

If you’re doing these math activities at home, kids can just wash their hands before they start, and then eat some of the candy corn when they finish. For a classroom, I would recommend setting aside some of the candy corn for eating. You can throw away the candy that was handled by students and then let them sample some unhandled candy at the end. But it’s up to you!

This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

Another option if you’re looking for a non-food fall math manipulative is to use acorns or mini erasers for these activities instead of candy corn.

Here are some Candy Corn Mini Erasers on Amazon!

Anyway… on to the activities!

Clipboards!

We love to use clipboards for these types of math activities. I really like these mini clipboards, and that’s what we used for these candy corn activities. However, full-size clipboards would also work just fine. I bought mine at Walmart, but Amazon is definitely the best price if you need a class set of clipboards.

Activity #1: Muffin Tin Addition

This is so easy to set up and a nice change from a worksheet! Write addition problems on cupcake liners. Stick them in a muffin pan, give your child some candy corn, and you’re ready to go!

Simply add the numbers and place that many pieces of candy corn in the muffin cup.

This is easy for a child to do on their own, and then the parent or teacher can check their answers later.

Activity #2: Measurement with Candy Corn

Non-standard measurement (measuring with something other than regular units) is quite beneficial for young kids. This activity provides great counting practice, spatial awareness, and the opportunity to estimate and then check your guess.

Choose items from around your home or classroom to measure with candy corn. Have your child guess how many candy corn long their item will be. Then line up the candy, count, and find out!

Activity #3: Multiplication Pumpkin Patches

We did this fun multiplication activity with candy pumpkins, but candy corn works great too.

Cut out some “pumpkin patches” from green paper. I traced a plastic cup to get a nice circle shape.

Then you just need a dice, candy pumpkins, and some paper for recording the multiplication sentences you’ll create.

Roll the dice. That number tells you how many pumpkin patches to lay out.

Then roll the dice again. That number tells you how many pumpkins to put in each patch.

So, 4 pumpkin patches with 5 pumpkins in each = 20 pumpkins.

Write the multiplication sentence, and then roll the dice and do it again!

Activity #4: Candy Corn Division

Sharing candy is the perfect context for talking about division. Start with 20 candy corns, and ask your child how to share them equally between 5 kids. How many pieces of candy will each person get?

Can 20 candies be equally divided in half? What if you have 25 candies? Can you divide that in half? Why not?

Activity #5: Candy Corn Money

Pretend that your candy corn is money! For this activity, it helps to have candy corn pumpkins as well as chocolate candy corn. (Don’t expect the chocolate candy corn to taste like chocolate, however. It totally does not, haha.)

Assign a dollar amount to each type of candy. I would recommend NOT making them the usual coin denominations. The point is to make kids think in a different way.

Then write down some amounts. Ask your child to figure out which candies he would need to pay with!

We made candy pumpkins worth 6 cents, chocolate candy corn worth 3 cents, and regular candy corn worth 2 cents.

So to make 15 cents, you would need 2 pumpkins and 1 chocolate candy corn.

Ask kids if there is only one way to make a certain amount, or if they can make it another way.

You can make 20 cents several ways using the denominations we chose.

Then try going the other way! Set out a few pieces of candy and have your child figure out how much money that is.

Activity #6: Empty the Candy Bowl

This is a SUPER fun game with some really great math concepts to discuss.

See all the instructions here in my M&M’s Math Activities post.

Activity #7: Guess How Many Candy Corns are in the Jar?

It’s interesting to see how kids approach this! One way to think about it is to count how many are in each “layer” and then multiply by the number of layers. That’s not a perfect approach with the way candy corn fit together in the jar, but it will give you a great start.

Our guess was 180, and there were actually only 133.

Counting all those candy corns is a beneficial activity in itself! How will you count in such a way that you don’t easily lose track? Grouping by 10’s is a great way to start.

More Fall STEM Activities for Kids

Here’s a collection of fall engineering challenges, fall leaf and pumpkin science, chemical reactions, and more. See them here: Awesome Fall STEM Challenges