SUMHalloween Maths for Kids: Lolly Sorting, Pumpkin Guessing and Five Free Games
Halloween week is not famous for focus. There are costumes to finish, lollies to count and a lot of excitement to burn off, and times tables are not high on anyone's list.
That is fine. Halloween is full of maths already, and none of it looks like homework: sharing out a lolly haul fairly, working out what a costume costs, guessing how many seeds are in a pumpkin. A few minutes of that, plus a game or two, and you have a maths week that nobody has to be talked into.
Here is what we have put together.
Watch: 35 seconds of the arcade, Halloween edition
We made a short Halloween video for the Sumburst Arcade. It starts with a question plenty of parents will recognise and runs through every game in about half a minute.
Five Halloween maths ideas for the kitchen table
None of these need a worksheet or more than ten minutes. Most of them need lollies.
1. Sort the haul. Tip the bag out after trick-or-treating and sort it into piles by type. Count each pile, then ask which there is most of and how many more chocolates there are than jelly snakes. For older kids, turn the piles into a bar chart on scrap paper. That is data handling, and it comes with a reward at the end.
2. Share it fairly. Two or three siblings, one pile of lollies: how many does everyone get, and what happens to the leftovers? Sharing 23 lollies between 3 people is division with a remainder, and nobody needs convincing to get the answer right.
3. Fractions of the bag. If 6 of the 18 lollies are chocolate, what fraction is that? Can it be simplified? What fraction is left once the chocolate is eaten? Slipping in a percentage (a third is about 33%) works well for upper primary.
4. Set the trading rate. Kids trade lollies anyway, so make it maths. If 2 jelly snakes are worth 1 chocolate, how many snakes buy 5 chocolates? That is ratio, the same idea behind exchange rates and recipe scaling.
5. Estimate the pumpkin. Before carving, everyone guesses how many seeds are inside and writes it down. Then count them in groups of ten. Closest guess wins. It is estimation, place value and counting in tens, and the counting goes quicker with more hands.
Then play one: the maths in each game
If the lollies are gone and they want more, the arcade picks up where the kitchen table left off. All five games are free to play in a browser on a phone, tablet or computer, with no download and no ads.
- Kingdom Math Defender is the most Halloween of the lot: waves of enemies march on your castle, and you hold them off by building towers and solving problems to upgrade them. Every fifth wave brings a boss. Good for multiplication, division and percentages.
- Element Spellcaster is wizards and monsters. Each monster carries a sum toward your tower, and answering it fires a fireball. Three quick answers in a row trigger Overdrive. Good for times tables and speed.
- Slice Rush picks up straight from idea 3. Every order is a fraction of a pizza to build slice by slice, and then the customer needs the right change.
- Café Crumb suits idea 4. Pour a latte that is 75% milk, cut three eighths of a cake, then count out change in Australian notes and coins.
- Math Diner is quick recall under pressure: every customer orders with a sum, and you have to serve it before their patience runs out.
Anyone can try them without an account. A free account gives three plays of each game every day, saves your child's progress, streak and level between visits, and unlocks live duels against a friend, five a day.
For parents and teachers
If you want to see how it is going rather than just hear about it, a free parent account includes a login for one child, and a free teacher account includes logins for five students. You can see what each of them is practising and where they are getting stuck.
If you would rather keep things on paper this week, the worksheet library covers grades 1 to 12, with an answer key on every sheet.
Play the arcade free this Halloween, and have a happy, sticky, lolly-counting week.