Easter Candy Sales.

After Halloween, Easter is the second most popular holiday for candy.  According to a report by the 2017 National Retail Federation, Americans spent $18.4 billion on Easter candies.  This is a six percent increase over 2017.  It also represents around 146 million pounds of sweets.

Although Valentines day is associated with candy, people spent 0.2 billion more on Easter Candy than they did for Valentine Day candy.

Now the 146 million pounds of candy breaks down to about half a pound of candy for every person in the country.  It is also equivalent to over 11,000 African bush elephants.  In addition, the candy sold at easter accounts for more than one third of the seasonal candy sold. Seasonal candy is classified as candy sold during specific times such as Easter, Halloween, or Valentines day and accounts for 17 percent of the candy sold annually.

The National Retail Federation site has some great data teachers can incorporate into the lessons for this time of year.  They provide historical information on the number of people who celebrate Easter from 2009 to 2019.  They have another graph for average amount of money spent per person over the same 10 year period and the total dollars spent by everyone who purchased candy during that period.

That is just for candy.  They also provide graphs indicating how much is spent for candy, clothing, food, flowers, etc for the 10 year period broken down as percent of population, total expected spending, per person spending, how they are celebrating.   They also include a break down for 2019 demographics by gender, age and region.

These graphs allow students to read, interpret, and prepare reports based on the information.  I think I'd begin with having students look at the data before formulating questions they have about the data before they analyze it.  They could also take the data and transform it into infographics to share with others.  Furthermore, you could have students calculate the annual increase or decrease over the 10 years.

On the other hand, this site has a great infographic for how much money was spent at Easter in 2018, covering everything from gifts and candy to traditions and live animals.  The infographic is easy to read and would give students a great chance to read and interpret its data.

If you prefer predone activities, Yummy Math has several ready to do.   One activity has students try to make a low guess for the number of Peeps sold at Easter, another guess that is too high, and a third you think it really is.  The exercise is set up to have students discuss what they need in order to make proper guesses and at the very end, the teacher will provide the amount sold.

Have a great day. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear and I hope you have a great day.