In an effort to creatively find new ways to help kids learn, a few innovative teachers have come up with the idea of using chocolate and candy to teach. Some call it mouth watering math and others simply use candy in the way they would traditionally use other tools. Candy math can be used to teach fractions and percentages – using candy to pose and solve questions. Using multi-colored candy teachers are able to show kids percentages and fractions much in the same way kids past would have learned with the beads on an abacus. Obviously applications for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division also apply.
Chocolate and candy also have other academic applications outside of science and apart from those obvious subjects like marketing and taste testing. Making rock candy is a fairly simple task and can be a really cool science experiment for kids. Being able to eat the finished product will provide even more motivation to do a good job. Kids dissolve sugar in water and bring it to boil. Once slightly cooled they pour the liquid into a jar with a string or stick placed in the centre and sticking out of the liquid. After about a week each kid will have a rock candy sample of his or her own. Teach them the processes that occurred and there you have it – a great science candy lesson.
Of course chocolate and candy can still be used to motivate in the way it always has been, that is to say as a bribe for children who behave or get the right answers!