Halloween Candy Sorting Activity: Compare and Contrast

Halloween Candy Sort Activity with Free Printable

What you'll find in this post

Celebrating and Learning this Halloween

Halloween is a big hit in our house. We do lots on hands on learning with candy, pumpkins, stickers, erasers, sensory bins. I mean, you name it, we do it.

I like to incorporate STEM because Halloween is SO perfect to introduce your preschooler to STEM activities. I know science experiments can get messy and math can sometimes have a lot of parts to it, even building can get to be a lot of clean up, but that hands on experience is really what memories are made of!

But there are so many interactive and hands on activities that you can do this Halloween to promote learning that aren’t messy or involve too many pieces or clean up. An easy activity is this Halloween candy sorting activity.

Halloween Candy Sorting Activity

This Halloween Candy Sorting Activity is so versatile and can be modified to different learning needs. The goal is to have kids compare and contrast ideas and concepts. What I love most is that it’s really inclusive in a classroom environment. You can mix students up homogeneously and have them work on this activity and have each group do different levels of learning so your class as a whole is learning heterogeneously.

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Learning Compare and Contrast: Comparative Thinking Skills

This sorting activity teaching a very important life skill: compare and contrast. The ability to compare and contrast is the one the first higher-order reading comprehension skills we introduce in elementary education.

Comparative thinking skills allows students to categorically understand the text they are consuming. They can group ideas and concepts into something basic like “same versus different.”

This, along with oral storytelling, is one of the basic foundations of being a good writer that can organize information and express ideas clearly.

Beyond the classroom, learning to compare and contrast is a life skill in that it helps you make decisions. What should I pack for a vacation? Which class do I want to register for in college? Which insurance policy do I want for my kids and family? Which cookie recipe turned out better and why?

Math and Literacy Halloween Centers

Since the entire game is blank, you have the option to use this in your Math and Literacy centers. I’ve mixed this up for my kids at home by having some photo boxes to be focused on words and others on math and numericals. Here are some ideas:

Common Noun vs Proper Noun
Capital vs lowercase letter identification
Odd vs Even Numbers (just whole numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)
Greater than vs Less than (great than/less than 10, etc.)
Word Families (-at, -ut, etc.)
Diphthongs (sh-, ch-, etc.)

Differentiating Instruction

If you’re a teacher, you know that you have several kids on different levels. This Halloween candy sort activity can be a unifying activity so that no one feels left out. You can set up stations where one is just identifying numbers. Second station is addition with math manipulatives. Third station is subtraction. If you teach early elementary, you can even focus on multiplication and division centers.

If you’re homeschool, this is a great activity for kids of different ages. Let’s see you have a 3 year old who is learning to tell the difference between capital and lowercase letters. Or a transition kinder kid (TK) that’s learning some letter sounds. Or a Kinder/1st grader that is learning about rhyming words or diphthongs/tripthongs. No one feels like they can’t participate but the activity is differentiated per each child. I call that a win-win, mama!

Getting Ready to Use the Freebie

What’s Included:

20 Candy pieces
2 Candy bars

What Else You’ll Need:

a printer
regular paper or card stock
laminator
scissors
pencil/dry erase marker
two brown paper lunch bags or two halloween candy buckets

Watch It Here

How To Use It

The complete directions are including in a parent and teacher guide in the first few pages of the workbook. To prepare the activities for this Halloween candy sorting activity, I suggest printing them in color on white card stock or printing on regular paper and laminating it so it’s durable and reusable.

Based on previous feedback from the Ice Cream activity, I realized that it’s very tedious and difficult to cut round edges, so I’ve simplified this to larger squares. This makes prep work super easy, especially with a cutter. It also makes it easier for the kids to keep the candy handy and organized.

Pin It For Later

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Tagged: Candy Sort Freebie Halloween