Halloween Math Part 2

  Here is the second part of the Halloween math activities.  It's always good to have a variety of possible activities for this time of year.

1. This activity is designed to have students determine which candy has the most calories.  In addition, students are required to create scatter plots.

2.  The American Chemical Society calculated that a 180 pound person would need to eat 262 pieces of fun sized candies or over 1,650 pieces of Candy Corn to reach a point of having a 50% chance of dying due to a sugar overdose.

3.  Here is an activity associating a quadratic function to pumpkin tossing.  There is a huge contest held back east where people go to toss pumpkins as far as they can using some sort of catapult.

4. Provide a pumpkin outline on a coordinate grid to students and have them create a symmetrical face on it.

5. Provide the coordinates for students to graph on a coordinate plane.  The final product could be a ghost, pumpkin, or even a bat so they get a chance to practice graphing.

6. Here is a graphing activity in which the author calculates the amount of candy bought and given out over a two year period and then breaks all the information down into various graphs.  There are enough graphs for students to really practice reading graphs.

7.  This site had a variety of graphs dealing with Halloween from candy given out to retailers who sell candy to factors influencing candy choice to costume choices.

8. From the Infographic Journal comes a wonderful infographic on 100 years of candy beginning in 1910 and lists the top 50 candies.  This is a timeline type infographic which is great for learning to interpret data. 

9. From Full Deck Design, comes this wonderful infographic showing the top 10 favorite Halloween candies. This information could be used to create several different types of graphs and lead to a discussion of which representation is best to use.

Lots of wonderful math activities that do not rely on filling out "Halloween" worksheets designed to replace coconuts with candies or pumpkins.  I believe when students get into high school, they should be doing graphing activities and interpreting data on infographics rather than doing standard work.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great Halloween.