This activity is one that you can do with any group of items! But what better to catch your student’s attention than Halloween Candy!
One of my favorite sorting and categorizing activity that will develop your students Executive Function skills!
“If you like candy raise your hand!!!”
I mean seriously, who doesn’t get excited when seeing a Trick or Treat basket filled with those little individual candies?
Inside of this candy bucket is an fun and engaging lesson on categorizing that will help you develop your students executive function skills.
Dumping a bucket of Halloween Candy out in the middle of a circle of elementary kids will definitely create an opportunity for them to have to control their impulses, work their memory, and shift their attention!
The Executive Function Skills:
- Inhibitory Control…LOL! I mean, who can resist all that candy?!! Controlling our inhibitions to talk, interrupt, share ideas, touch, and explore is not easy. This is a task that needs to be exercised in order to be matured and developed.
- Working Memory – students will be able to organize important information in order to create groups or categories. They will need to hold information about the category, process it, and remember it, as they think (pre-plan) what item they will add to the group or category
- Flexible Attention – student will be able to shift their attention from their own thoughts about the candy to the thoughts being shared by others in the class. Students will be able to practice good listening, sharing, and speaking skills.
“Picture your very favorite candy that you are hoping to get when you go trick or treating!”
“Ok, now I’m going to dump a bunch of Halloween Candy on the floor in front of you, but you cannot touch it! Just look and see if you find the candy that is your favorite Halloween candy. Then put your hands on your head when you see your favorite one!”
Can you picture your students during this activity?
Could they make a mental picture in their minds?
Could they resist the temptation to reach in and grab their favorite piece?
Can they follow the directions you gave them to sit, watch, find their favorite, but DON’T TOUCH, put their hand on their head when they see it?
If you answered NO to any of the above questions, then your students could use some strategies that will allow them to practice using the Frontal Lobe of their brain: the one responsible for Executive Function Skills.
Often times early learners have difficulty putting items into categories or groups. We need to develop this basic and foundational skill so that the executive function skill of organizing and categorizing simple items can transfer to organizing thoughts, ideas, and concepts.
Being able to organize both items and concepts is needed to successfully implement life skills, work efficiency, comprehension, understanding similarities and differences, math concepts, and so much more.
Fun activities such as this one will enable your students to exercise their executive function skills.
Categorizing Candy
Materials: 1 big bucket of Halloween Candy
Objective: The students will be able to organize candy into groups based on their similarities. They will be able to add to different categories and create their own categories.
Procedures:
- Pour a bunch of Halloween Candy out in the center of the area your students are sitting.
- Pull several different types of candy (all with something in common) to the side.
- Ask your students if they see something that they have in common. Go around the circle and ask your students to add another piece of candy to the group. Vote as a class to determine if the newly added candy fits into the group.
- Ask your students if they could name the group. For example: the chocolate group, the chewy group, the orange wrapper groups, the group that begins with the letter S, etc.
- Continue this several times, then allow students to take turns starting a group for others to add to.
I like to do this activity several times throughout the week. You can change it up by doing it in small groups or with a partner. You can give them each a handful of candy and ask the students to individually pull a certain candy out of the group based on a given description.
Variety of ways to categorize:
Teacher formed categories.
The teacher will form a group with just a couple of items. The teacher may say things like, this item fits into the group, but this item does not. As you do this, your students will be mentally trying to figure out your group. You can tell your kids to give you a thumbs up or put their hands on their head when they think they know the group. When most of your class thinks they know the category, you can ask them to add a piece of candy that they think fits the category. Do this until you are able to lead them to naming the category.
Student formed categories.
Allow a student to begin a group of items that fit into the same category. Give the other students a chance to try to add items that will fit into the category. The lead student will be able to tell the others if their item fits or not. Continue letting the students take turns. This method also works well in small groups. You can easily walk around the room to assess who is able to categorize and who need to have more practice.
Hide and Seek the Category
This is my students favorite! After they have had practice forming groups and naming categories. You can hide items (candy) around the room. You name a category (candy that is chewy), and they have to find a hidden item that fits the named category. Of course the best part, is letting them eat the candy when you are done!
Mind Reader
This is a game where students must name a category after being given clues. You can have a bunch of items on a table and the leader will give 4 clues that will lead the class to the answer. The leader would say, ” I’m thinking of my favorite candy. I’m wondering who can read my mind about my favorite candy based on the clues that I give to you.”
Clue #1 It is sweet.
Clue #2 It is in an orange wrapper.
Clue #3 It has many small pieces that are all different colors.
Clue #4 It has peanut butter.
Answer: Reeses Pieces
Private Investigator
This is another game where you hold the answer to they mystery. Your students will be the investigators. They are questioning you about the stolen candy. They can ask up to 10 questions to figure out what the stolen candy is. This game works similar to “20 Questions”.
I hope you enjoy the fun and simple games that will allow your students to develop strong executive function skills.
Please comment below if you have any questions or if you would like me to share ideas about specific topics.
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I really like this idea and activity; thank you for sharing! You’re right…what child doesn’t like candy? This reminded me a lot of the marshmallow test. Leaving candy in front of a child and seeing if they have the impulse to eat it, or wait for further instructions. I like the extensions you provided by having different ways to categorize the candy. I think it’s important that students have a say and it’s not all teacher-driven. Student would get a kick out of playing hide and seek, and then of course, getting the chance to eat the candy. This is a fun way to enhance executive functioning skills in young kids. Thanks for sharing Erin.
Tempting my students with candy might give me the same results as the famous marshmallow experiment. My favorite part of this candy activity is all the differentiating that can go into it based on what the students need. This activity would be great to do in small groups or with partners. I would love to use this lesson as a cross curriculum activity because students could easily write about their favorite candy or the lesson could be used for math talking about fractions.
This is an activity students will love. I like how it has so many ways to practice executive function. Another aspect students will enjoy is having input in the different categories. I think each of the variations would be fun to try!
I’ve used this activity with many different grade levels…you know they love anything with candy. It also makes a good intro into a writing assignment!
Yes! I’ve used it as a writing assignment in 3rd grade for descriptive paragraphs. Also for persuasive writing. The best is that candy will work their inhibitory control, emotional regulation (if others take what they wanted), and organizing information in the brain! It’s so good!
This activity is SO fitting for the current season! Until reading through the post I had no idea how many roles Executive Functioning skills play in something as simple as a pile of candy. The fact that this activity is truly practicing Executive Functioning skills in disguise is the perfect way to support student’s EF needs while also keeping them engaged and interested! Students at my elementary would love the Mind Reader game, it would be great for a Morning Meeting activity.
This is a great activity for categorizing. Students love candy, so it is especially useful for having students practice inhibitory control. I use food as manipulatives in math class, and I always have to allow the kids to eat one item before getting them to focus on how to use the pieces of food to solve math problems. With the categorizing items being candy, students will be hyper-focused on the candy. They will strengthen their ability to avoid distractions (how good the candy is going to taste, when they’ll be able to eat it, is someone else sneaking their favorite candy, will my favorite still be there, etc.) I see so many applications for this seemingly simple task.
I like this idea. I am also thinking it could be a focused unit. This could be incorporated into Math for graphing whereby students created either picture graphs or bar graphs (I just finished this at the third grade level so it would coincide nicely) with the categories. It could be incorporated into writing where they write about their favorite candy or create a new candy bar (my students loved writing a prompt where they created a new candy bar last year). I am sure there are some books that could be read as well for a reading focus (off the top of my head, I can think of “When Ruby tried to Grow Candy”). In an effort to be allergy aware or if food limitations exist ,you could also print up small pictures of each candy. It pulls away from the idea of inhibitory control but accommodates some rules schools or classrooms may have.
I had never considered how poor my E.F. skills were until I read this and realized I too can’t keep my hands off the candy bucket!
That being said, I love this activity. Halloween candy is truly a motivator, and what an opportunity for kids to visualize the item in their minds without being able to see the treat, and categorize into a group and name it. I also like the idea of having to work with a partner and take turns defending your idea for a group name–great social skills opportunity. Thank you for sharing this activity, lastly opening candy wrappers is a great fine motor activity. I am printing it out to put in my planner for October!
Every November, I try to think of something creative to do with all the leftover candy from Halloween and this is a great solution. I also love set ups that go with several activities and hit on many different skills. Not only can students work on sorting, self control, planning, and working memory but this set up can also work on beginning and ending sounds, addition, subtraction, division, fine motor when opening the packages etc.
I’ve done this with every grade level I teach! It’s so much fun. I hope your students will enjoy it too!
This is a great idea for helping students develop executive function skills. It helps students with their self-control by them not grabbing at the candy right away. In order for this to work, the students must trust you when you say they will get the candy later. This activity gives students the chance to move focus away from hoping they get their favorite candy to how can the candy be categorized in different ways. We’ve all see children get hyper focused on a high-value item. This allows them to practice moving their focus away, as well as come up with ideas to categorize items in a variety of ways. Great idea that I will definitely try!
They will love it! I’d love to hear how it goes!
This is such a great activity, especially for this time of year! It’s fun, exciting, and completely engaging for students to the point that they probably don’t even realize they’re learning! I am amazed at how many EF skills go into something as simple as categorizing candy. I especially like the Mind Reader and Hide and Seek games. Each of the activities stretches the mind to hold and process information, but also to be flexible with their thinking as they shift from one thought to another as they gain more clues. This would even be fun to do at home with my own kids!
Love this idea! I will include a similar suggestion on my parent resource that I am creating.
I love how there is no prep for this activity as it is using Halloween candy that is all mixed up already! I am so excited to use this idea with my class next year. I can imagine their little eyes looking at all that candy! This one activity will practice so many executive functioning skills and there are so many variations.
This is a great idea! It takes something that everyone loves and can relate to and makes it meaningful to their learning! Mind Reader and Hide and Seek are two great games that you can play with kids at different age levels. Being descriptive with the different candies challenges students to use their listening and comprehension skills and draw conclusions based on it.
As an SLP I see some of my students in a group with the OT, and when I started reading this post I immediately thought that this activity would be great for the students we share, many of which have EF difficulties. Reading this I realized. that working on categories is not only a language target, but includes many aspects of executive functioning too! I love the idea of using student formed categories to give students more ownership of the activity, and the mind reader activity is a great way to work on describing and vocabulary skills as well. These activities are great, and I will definitely keep it in mind to use with my students when Halloween comes around!
Candy sure is a motivator! They could do this activity over and over and it never gets old!
This is a very fun way to approach developing executive function skills. The Halloween Candy categorization activity seems like it will engage students while honing essential cognitive abilities. Can’t wait to try these games in my classroom!
As a music teacher having students works together to put classroom instruments into their percussion groups (woods, metals, drum, shaker/scrapers) without playing would work on their executive function skills. All students love to play small percussion instruments so this activity would work on their impulse control to not play them. It would teach patience, communication and social skills as well.