I have been feeling like our Maths has been a bit dry lately and I always think fun maths equates to maths that is remembered. So last night while I was picking up some bread and milk I quickly grabbed some M&M’s (really it could have been any coloured sweets but the M&M’s were sitting right by the bread – yes I totally fell for the clever marketing strategy of the shop placing the M&M’s next to the bread). Anyway the M&M’s were perfect for some Maths so that is my excuse.

I started by giving each kid a set of sweets (I actually was just going to do this with my youngest but his sister wanted to join in so while I explained some concepts to the youngest my oldest got some fun revision). They started by representing the sweets with tally marks.

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Then we converted the tally marks into a bar graph (the graph paper the kids are using is the one I always use for Maths it is the 1cm Graph sheet from Activity Village).

Which lead to a discussion on things like range, mode, median and mean (all new concepts for my youngest he has only really read basic graphs before and looked for things like – who has the most or the least).

We then mixed in some fractions (just because) and he had to show me the different coloured sweets as a fraction. His older sister also had to write them as percentages and decimals.

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And lastly I got my oldest to convert the bar graph into a line graph.

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I must admit it turned out to be a really good maths session, I covered quite a few new ideas with my youngest and my oldest did a nice bit of revision, plus everyone got to eat some chocolate afterwards (always a win).