Candy Land Fun: Engaging Math Activities for Preschool and Beyond
Does your preschooler love to play Candy Land? I know mine does. Not only does he like playing the game, but he loves the board. The board sparks his imagination of a Candy Land world. I remember feeling the same way when I was a kid as Queen Frostine, Princess Lolly and Grandma Nutt came to life. As a kid, we even had the VHS board game where we had to defeat evil Lord Licorice. 😂
Target Audience
This Candy Land Math Activity is a great activity for preschoolers and kindergartners, but you can extend it to older kids by integrating more probability concepts. Many activities like this one can be leveled depending on what kind of questions you ask and what level of academic vocabulary your child/student uses. You can use this activity in a homeschool, preschool, pre-K, or an elementary or middle school setting.
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Literacy Connection
Did you know that Little Golden Books have a Candy Land title? Read the Little Golden Book Candy Land to introduce the characters to your kids and incorporate literacy!
Our Candy Land Math Adventure
One day as we were playing Candy Land, my son (newly four years old) decided to make his own board. So I brought out the dot markers, and we made our own boards. Then we used the game pieces and the cards from our Candy Land box to play our new games. This is what he created (see photo below). Do you notice any problems with it? (Note: The purple spot on the bottom left is the start. The blue line on the top left is the end.)
Probabilities and Candy Land
I noticed right away that it was almost impossible to win. It reminded me of some of the games I used to have my math students play, like the River Crossing Game. In the River Crossing game, if a student puts a piece on 1, they could never win as you can never roll a 1 with two dice. But when students realized that they made a fatal error and it was impossible to win that’s when the learning and the “aha” moments came. So I was excited to see how this would unfold with my four year old.
As we played the game, we got stuck because we couldn’t get that many blues or oranges. It was a great opportunity for discussion about games—at least an introductory discussion at a four-year old level. But what a great opportunity to introduce the math practice standards at a young age!
Math Practice Standards in Candy Land Game Design
SMP.1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
Most kids like to win! When kids realize they can’t win a game, they are suddenly confronted with a problem that’s important and relevant to them. Now they have to figure out why they can’t win and how to change the situation so they can.
SMP.3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
Ask your child why they can’t win. They need to be able to articulate their reasoning using age-appropriate language. Depending on the age and maturity of your child, you as the parent may even be able to throw out some “false reasonings” and have your child explain why they are wrong.
SMP.7 Look for and make use of structure.
Games work because of an underlying structure. Many games like Candy Land rely on probability and chance. In Candy Land you move forward by using a deck of cards. Although it is mostly random, it’s impossible to pick 30 orange cards in a row because their aren’t 30 in the sample set. You can also talk about patterns as a sequence of colors that are laid out in a pattern. For older kids, you can talk about the chance of getting an Ice Cream Float or the Candy Cane card.
Ohio has made a document of how the math standards look by grade! Check out their K-5 Math Practice Document.
Creating a “Winnable” Game
After playing your “unwinnable game,” make a “winnable” game together. Here’s our example! (see above) Notice we didn’t follow the pattern as strictly as the original Candy Land game, but this one still works and is “winnable”!
What Happens If Your Child Makes a “Winnable” First Game?
I got lucky because my child made an “unwinnable “game. But what if your child makes a “winnable” game? What do you do then? In that instance, you make an “unwinnable” one, and play it together, but don’t tell them it’s “unwinnable”. Have them help you figure out and explain why it doesn’t work. Then problem solve together and figure out how to make it “winnable”?
Probability Concepts for Younger Children
You can introduce early probability concepts to younger children. The best way to do this is to encourage them to use the words: sometimes, always, or never. Is winning a sure thing? Does the same person always win? Or is it a scam and impossible to win? For example, if you have all blue spaces on the board but you don’t have any blue cards in the deck, it will be an impossible game to win. Once they can articulate sometimes, always, or never situations, move unto evaluating whether games or fair or not fair. Does everyone have the same chance of winning?
Adapting the Activity for Older Students
In most states probability is taught in seventh grade. Here is the first probability standard in the 7th Grade Common Core Standards:
7.SP.C.5: Understand that the probability of a chance event is a number between 0 and 1 that expresses the likelihood of the event occurring. Larger numbers indicate greater likelihood. A probability near 0 indicates an unlikely event, a probability around 1/2 indicates an event that is neither unlikely nor likely, and a probability near 1 indicates a likely event.
I’m not going to list all the seventh-grade standards, but you can see that in this grade level, students are starting to quantify probability. You can use the Candy Land game to talk about and quantify the probability of picking a red card vs a “special” card, etc.
Conclusion
Who doesn’t love Candy Land? And who can resist fun, organic learning experiences? I hope that you and your child (or students) have fun learning together!
If you like this activity, be sure to check out some of my other Preschool or Kindergarten Activities. Subscribe to get these lessons sent straight to your inbox.
- A Winnie-the-Pooh Day STEM Adventure
- Enhance Learning with Pete the Cat and His Four Groove Buttons: Math and ELA Connections
- Using Ten Black Dots to Teach Decomposition of Numbers
- Using Ten Flashing Fireflies to Teach Decomposition within Ten
- A STEM Lesson Featuring Knuffle Bunny and Corduroy
- Interactive Math and ELA Lesson Using Ten Using Ten in a Hurry
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Another fun math lesson by Annie. Keep up the great work.,