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Saturday, February 4, 2012

Pretzel and Nut Bark Recipe

Posted by Cindy on December 15, 2008

Here’s one of my favorite and super-easy Christmas sweets.

Pretzel and Nut Bark

3 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup thin pretzels broken into small chunks

2/4 cup salted nuts of any kind (I use mixed nuts)

1/3 cup white chocolate chips or almond bark

2 Tablespoons (more or less) of Christmas colored sprinkles (any style)

Line 13×9″ pan with foil so that the foil hangs over the edges.  In a large bowl, microwave the semisweet chocolate chips 1-2 minutes.  (Stir the chips after one minute, microwave in 30 second increments until chips are melted.)  Stir in pretzels and nuts.  Spread in pan.

In a smaller bowl, microwave the white chocolate chips or almond bark for 1 minute or until melted.  Place melted chocolate in a plastic ziptop baggie.  Snip the corner and squeeze the chocolate over the bark in the pan.  Lightly cover with sprinkles.  Chill for about 1 hour (until firm).

Lift the bark out by the foil, then peel the foil away.  Break the bark into pieces.  Keep chilled until ready to eat.

Living Math – Graphs Galore

Posted by Cindy on November 10, 2008

October/November = lots of falling leaves and lots of candy.  What better to do with both of those things?  Math, of course!  :o )

Whether you have extra M&M’s, Skittles, Smarties, Runts, or just a big bunch of assorted candy bars, take a few minutes to turn those sweets into more than cavities.  Even little bitty ones can sort candy, place the pieces on a blank grid, then color a bar graph.  As the kiddos get bigger, all the more fun they can have graphing their candy.  Here’s a post from last year about how we used M&M’s to do all sorts of graphs.  This year, we did some candy graphing, but not quite as in depth as last year.

And don’t forget all those autumn leaves!  Make a nature walk even more productive by collecting a sack of leaves to sort and graph.

Literal or concrete graphs are not only fun, but help younger ones understand better what a graph on paper represents.

After making the concrete graphs, my children jotted the information and used centimeter grid paper to design their own graphs.

Happy graphing!

M & M Math Activities and Links

Posted by Cindy on October 15, 2007

Talk about a fun week of math learning!  Here are a couple of the activities my children did during our week of m&m math fun.  Overall, we covered estimation, sorting, counting, adding, word problems, pictographs, bar graphs, comparison graphs, pie graphs, graphs made in a spreadsheet program, fractions, fair shares (division), mean/median/mode, decimals and percentages.  I’d say that was enough math to rival any textbook curriculum for a week!

http://www.col-ed.org/cur/math/math26.txt

graphing and probability

http://score.kings.k12.ca.us/lessons/mandm.html

estimating, sorting, counting, graphing, plotting, fractions, percentage, and calculating mean, median, mode

http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/donovan/documents/M%20&%20M%20Math%20Intermediate_files/M%20&%20M%20Math%20Intermediate.htm

predicting, classifying, graphing, percentages

http://ofcn.org/cyber.serv/academy/ace/math/cecmath/cecmath013.html

averages with m&m cookies

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/MathEstimationClassification.htm

easy estimation and classification

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/pdf.htm?m&mschart.pdf

printable m&m graph

http://www.create.cett.msstate.edu/create/classroom/lplan_view.asp?articleID=98

collect, graph, record and interpret data to create a bar graph on the computer

http://www.learnnc.org/lessons/KarenWalker5232002614

estimate, sort, graph and add with printable charts near the bottom

http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/Lessons/2622.htm

fractions, decimals and percentage

http://www.mms.com/us/fungames/

official m&m website

http://www.ciese.org/math/activities/candycircles/index.html

mean, median and mode

http://42explore.com/choclat.htm

many, many chocolate related activities and links