and my sweet family tries to do little activities together to celebrate.
What a great way to learn,
talk, and spend time together creating something meaningful.
One year we graphed the red, white and blue marshmallows.
Last year we baked a red,white, and blue cake
and made some fun art projects while talking about the birthday of America.
This year we found this festive Twizzlers Pull & Peel licorice that is
red, white, and blue while in the grocery store.
Our fun art project materials consisted of the licorice and white paper.
Here is what one strand of the licore looks like…
it has 9 colorful pieces of the candy…
three rows of three… in case you want to use it for an array or something else fun.
You have to pull the pieces apart… hence the name pull and peel.
But this is a great activity little hands to gentle
pppppuuuuullllllllll the pieces apart.
Then we create a FUN, colorful firecracker art project using the licorice.
There is no wrong way to do this…
and me and S, my 5 year old had a blast creating and nibbling.
It is fun to talk and giggle together.
We also talked about the initials USA and how they stood for the United States of America.
So we made the initials of the USA.
And of course we just played for a little while,
because that is what little learners do best.
S wanted to create a kite.
You can find Pull & Peel Licorice year round, but it is usually comes in just red.
You can use this type of licorice to make letters, words, and my favorite…
SHAPES.
I love using this candy to make shapes because my students have to think about
the number of sides, points, and even curves of shapes.
With some shapes, they also have to thing about the lengths and
if the lengths match or need to be change, such as with a square or a rectangle.
Creating shapes always takes more effort than copying them,
and therefore requires more thought from the learner.
Here is picture S created at the end of our “school time.”
She explained to me that this picture is obviously the ocean with the waves at the bottoms,
the sand in the middle, then the sun rays at the top.
Each pack contains 12 rows of the licorice too… which is a lot!
You can easily use one pack for many activities!
What other ideas can you think of to use this type of licorice at home or in your classroom?
There is a Twizzlers Pull and Peel math literature book that has some fun activities to do while you are reading it. It is one of those books that goes in an out of print but you can usually find a used copy on Amazon for a couple of dollars. The great thing is the book is good for a variety of ages and grades so it is great for families or for math nights.
Tara
The Math Maniac