Candy Contests, Candy News

Candy 1 to 20 Contest

October 6, 2011 by

Candy Favorites is delighted to be partnering with Chronicle Books to announce the release of Candy 1 to 20. This colorful new board book, published by Chronicle Books, uses vibrant photos of classic candies to teach basic counting skills.

To celebrate Candy 1 to 20, we’ll be giving away 5 copies of the book. Each of them is signed by the author! To enter, just share your experience of candy as a teaching tool.

Did you learn probability through the colors of M&M’s? Are you a teacher who uses the squares of Hershey Bars to teach fractions? Or was your favorite candy used as a reward as you learned important life lessons?

Since candy is a powerful motivator and positive reinforcement for all ages, the possibilities are endless. Send us your most memorable candy-fueled learning experiences, and you’ll be entered to win one of 5 signed copies of Candy 1 to 20. You can email us or submit the form below.

Winners will be announced Friday, October 28.

Contest Terms & Conditions

 

Submit Your Story!

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18 Comments

  • Reply Matthew October 6, 2011 at 11:05 am

    A Giant Kiss

    One of life’s most important lessons learned from a piece of candy. No, not my colors, numbers, or ABC’s; but, Rejection, good old-fashioned Rejection.
    Picture this: 5th grade – a bespecaled, cross-eyed, unathletic, pudgey little boy swooning over the tall, gorgeous, popular, quite pubescent girl. Let’s call her Jillian. Valentine’s Day was fast approaching. How would I finally attract her attention? Weeks worth of allowance shoved in my pocket, I donned my taupe Member’s Only jacket, mounted my 10-speed Schwinn and road to Joel’s, the local candy purveyor. I plunked down my cash and road back home with the world’s biggest Hershey Kiss in tow. One of those giant 7 oz. jobs! I could barely contain myself. The days until Feb. 14th dragged like an Arctic winter. Finally, I stowed it in my backpack and brought it to school. My heart raced through penmanship, spelling, and math. Recess had arrived. The time was now. I awkwardly stumbled through the gaggle of 5th grade girls to Jillian. In a moment of pure eloquence, as I shoved the giant Hershey Kiss to her face and I uttered, not a Shakespearean sonnet, but a feeble “Here.” The echoes of the subsequent laughter still languish in my ears. I had not even turned on my Keds to flee and Jillian had tossed that giant Kiss to one of her friends. “Here you can have it,” she said. Her smug smirk still vivid in my eyes. For a short moment that giant Hershey Kiss was filled with hopes and dreams – a life with Jillian. Shattered in an instant, those dreams ruined by the toss of the giant Kiss.

  • Reply Owen October 6, 2011 at 11:07 am

    Is it “9 Men’s Morris” OR “Medieval Candy Game?

    I am in the 5th Grade. We are currently studying Medieval Times and our teacher lets us play the game 9 Men’s Morris with candy. We use candy corn and/or skittles to represent the game pieces. Everyone in my class is motivated to play. The game is very fun and the winner gets to keep the candy. I can’t think of a better game or a better outcome!

  • Reply Erin October 6, 2011 at 11:08 am

    Skittle Graphs

    My homeschooled kids learned about graphing using Skittles.

  • Reply Ben October 7, 2011 at 10:10 am

    Candy was the first commodity that I understood held value. I spent most of my allowance on candy and I always wanted candy. I remember being devastated watching the market price for a candy bar go from $0.50 to $0.60, which meant that my $1 allowance no longer could buy 2 candy bars.

    Right after Halloween, I would wait for a major sale and then buy large amounts of whatever was left. I remember eating some 400 dum dums as I would do my homework, it was like my first addiction. I still engage in the practice of buying and hoarding large amounts of candy when the price falls below 75% off, although I largely lost my sweet tooth.

  • Reply Laura October 11, 2011 at 1:43 pm

    I teach 7th grade science and one of the topics we cover is Chemistry. Chemistry can be a tough subject for some kids. I know it was always difficult for me when I was in school. When we are talking about Elements, Atoms, Compounds, Molecules and and Symbols I use candy to help teach the topic! We make candy compounds!

    The students have a variety of different candies. The first thing we do is discuss what a symbol is and how we can represent the different candy with a symbol. Ex: Hershey Kisses would be Hk. Skittles would be S. Then we discuss how on the periodic table the elements are also represented with symbols. Ex: Oxygen is O. After we have our symbols we put the create compounds and molecules using the candy. We could put 2 skittles and 1 hershey kiss together and the formula would be S2Hk (subscript on the 2). We then discuss how there are 2 skittles so there are 2 atoms of skittles in the compound. There is only 1 hershey kiss so there is only 2 atom of hershey kiss. We do this for a variety of different examples and use the candy as a tool to help understand some ideas that are a little difficult to understand without having a visual model to look at.

    The kids LOVE this activity because not only does it make chemistry a little easier to understand, but they get to eat the candy after! I love this activity because I immediately have their attention if there is candy involved and sometimes getting the attention of a middle schooler is not the easiest thing to do! Learning can be fun and candy helps it be fun… and Yummy!

  • Reply Candace October 11, 2011 at 2:12 pm

    My candy story is a little different. When I was born, my parents were going to name me “Dolores” for my grandmother. But Grammie said “Oh, no. Name her for something like chocolate candy.” So I was named Candace, but everyone has always called me Candy.

  • Reply Lynette October 11, 2011 at 2:21 pm

    I have six children. I homeschool all six for different reasons. I always tell my children that eating a lot of candy isn’t very healthy for them. As we were doing our work one morning, I saw one of my children with a handful of M & M’s. I said why do you have all of those M & M’s and where did you get them? His reply was… “They are over there in the candy dish, and I’m helping Eli learn her subtraction.” He continued to say, ” See, if Eli has 10 M & M’s and I take 4, then she only has 6 left.” He worked all the way down to zero! Pretty smart kiddo-don’t you think? Well, it worked! She’s very good at her subtraction, but she would rather work on her addition, if you know what I mean! I love candy, and didn’t realize just how much I have around the house until then. So now I teach my kids that candy is okay- as long as we brush our teeth, and most definitely do other things to stay healthy and active! We continue to use candy as a math tool as well as bribery!!!!

  • Reply JoAnn October 11, 2011 at 3:05 pm

    My candy story is short and simple. I have three children of my own (all in their twenties now) and I have been a registered home childcare provider for twenty years.I have always used MandM chocolate candies to teach the children colors and counting. It works and they love the reward. I have had some of my former daycare children tell me they teach their own kids now with the M and M candies as a learning tool.

  • Reply Lynda October 11, 2011 at 3:37 pm

    I am a teacher and use candy as a motivator in the room. I give smarties on test days and tootsie roll pops as rewards. My favorite lesson is with m and m candies when we graph and do fractions, decimals and per cents for a 7th grade math lesson. They use extimation,line graphs,measurement,fractions,decimals and per cents all with that little bag of candy. When they are all done, they can eat the candy. A lesson they all love.

  • Reply Addie October 11, 2011 at 4:49 pm

    Candy has taught me to count calories!

  • Reply P October 11, 2011 at 5:02 pm

    One of my most memorable candy stories was not as much a learning experience for my nephew as it was for us grown-ups. One winter, we were staying at an indoor waterpark. When we were not swimming, we were playing in the arcade. One of my nephew’s favorite games involved a dump truck and a candy-o-meter. The smaller dump trucks could be manuvered to drop small pieces of candy into the prize slot. The candy-o-meter kept track of the plays and the amount won. When the highest point was reached on the candy-o-meter, a large dump truck would drop the grand prize. The grand prize was a bucket of candy of all shapes and sizes. We ‘adults’ told my nephew that he could only have 1 piece of candy before supper. He pulled out his piece and to our surprise, it was one-pound Hershey bar!! He exclaimed “I have my piece”! We then had to explain that the pounder was more than just 1 piece. It did help us ‘grown-ups’ see things more from a child’s perspective. What a nice memory.

  • Reply Sue October 17, 2011 at 10:14 am

    The story I want to tell is about a Sunday School Class I was teaching. It was more boys than girls. I had to have an incentive or something to keep them interested in getting up and coming to Sunday School. So, I made a chart for each child’s attendance. Every month that they didn’t miss a Sunday, I would give them a bag of candy. Let me tell you they watch the stars on the attendance board! They loved it and it worked. They didn’t want to miss and let anyone get ahead of them and we had a good class too with regular attendance. I also work at an elementary school. When I need papers back that I have a hard time getting. I tell them if you bring your paper back to me you can go to the candy jar. It works!!

  • Reply Debra October 18, 2011 at 2:07 pm

    I am a fifth grade teacher and we use candy all the time with our little buddies. We do activities like candy cane measuring, m & m graphing, reindeer sandwiches, counting w/ skittles etc. The students LOVE buddy time.

  • Reply Gina G. October 20, 2011 at 3:30 pm

    M&Ms and Skittles are wonderful for sorting and learning colors. We also love conducting candy experiments with Halloween candy.

  • Reply Tran October 20, 2011 at 4:07 pm

    What have i learned from (or through) candy? That too much of it DOES NOT give me a stomach ache! 🙂

  • Reply Irene October 24, 2011 at 6:04 pm

    CANDY!! … the perfect incentive to help students remember their library card! As the librarian in a small elementary school, my candy of choice was Jolly Ranchers. This tempting little bribe worked quite well for many years. Until last year.
    Over a period of just a couple weeks, two students on the playground accidentally swallowed their Jolly Rancher. Tragedy was averted, but it did involve the Heimlich maneuver! Last summer, during our Red Cross training, the instructor gave us scenarios to act out, to see how we would handle the emergency. My group came to me with this: “A student was running down the library stairs and fell, now he has stopped breathing, what do we do?” Of course we all got a laugh when the alleged culprit was a Jolly Rancher in his throat! But also a serious lesson… I now have gum drops on my desk for those younger kids!

  • Reply Kasee October 25, 2011 at 2:33 pm

    I have 2 children who excel at math, and 2 that need all the help they can get! I’m guessing this book would make a HUGE impact in my house … we are all candy lovers!!

  • Reply Natalie October 27, 2011 at 11:22 am

    All four of my children learned to count using candy. M&Ms, Skittles, Smarties, etc were all easy to count. They loved being “rewarded” by getting to the candy the counted.

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