M&M's for Math Skills Review

M&M's are useful for learning 1-1 correspondence as well as practicing other math-related skills. The girls had some leftover M&M's from Christmas, red and green colors, so I took the opportunity to review some of our previous math lessons. First, we classified the candy by color, and I asked, "Which has more, the red or the green?" So we lined up the colors, side by side. Whichever color had more, they could eat the extra candies.

Then M counted by two's, something that R does not do yet. Then we made patterns. R's was a simple red-green pattern, while M's was three greens followed by two reds. Then we would eat some.

Once we were down to just a few M&M's left, we would subtract. It is easier to build the understanding of adding and subtracting when you work with smaller numbers. Visually, the child can see the subtraction process when you eat 2 M&M's when there were 5 left.