Back to School Math Snack

I'm so excited! For the last couple of years I have provided my students with a math snack on the second day of school. I don't tell them it's a math snack, I ask them to examine it closely and figure out what kind of snack it is. I give them a paper plate to sort it if they'd like. It doesn't take them very long to see the connection to math. Then I go over the snack to tell them some of the things we'll be working on in math this year. So why am I excited? Because yesterday, as I was shopping, I found number crackers (a Kroger brand)!  They will be a great addition!  So what's in the snack? Here's a list and the connection I make to math:

• 4 Cheese Its - geometry (square), measurement (1 in. long), area (1 sq. inch), perimeter, and 4 because we'll review the attributes of shapes.
• Round cracker - because they may think it's a circle, but it's actually a cylinder
• Waffle pretzels - arrays for multiplication
• 1/2 of a cookie (soft, chewy chocolate chip cookie) - fractions
• 1 1/2 tootsie rolls - mixed numbers and decimals 
• Crispix - hexagon and 6 sided for our 6 math boxes (it's an Everyday Math thing), symmetry
• Number crackers - place value (base 10 system), I'll ask them to use them to make the biggest number possible and then the smallest number possible
• Sixlets - division (they can be divided into 1, 2, 3, or 6 groups)

It's a fun way to go over some of the math concepts they'll work on during the year.