Use Smarties to make the concept of addition easier to understand. Provide students with piles of Smarties and write out an addition problem on a piece of paper. Instruct students to count a number of Smarties to represent each addend in the given problem; for example, in the problem 2+2, students should count out two Smarties for each addend. To solve the problem, students count the total number of Smarties; in this case, four. Offer students a variety of addition problems so they can practice using the candies as a means of determining the sums.
Sorting is an important pre-math skill, as it helps students identify similarities among objects and group objects based on their similarities. This skill is useful in a variety of mathematical areas, including geometry, skip-counting and multiplication, for example. Use Smarties as a means of teaching sorting. Provide students with a mixed-up pile of Smarties and instruct them to separate the candies into piles of like colors: pink with pink, blue with blue, yellow with yellow and white with white, for example.
Smarties are also a useful manipulative for teaching fractions. Offer each student a pile of different-colored Smarties. Discuss what the word "denominator" means. Ask students to count the total number of Smarties, and explain that this number will represent the denominator in their fraction problems. Next, ask students to determine what fraction of their Smarties are a particular color. For example, instruct them to count how many green Smarties they have and then explain that the total number of green Smarties over the total number of all the Smarties represents the fraction of the candies that are green. Have them figure out the fraction of candies for each color.
Use Smarties to teach your students how to graph and read graphs. Offer your students a handful of Smarties and instruct them to sort the candies into piles based on their colors, then count the total number of candies in each pile. On a piece of paper, write a number, such as 20, along the left-hand side, or Y-axis and write the names of the colors along the bottom of the paper, or the X-axis. Instruct students to create a bar graph that shows how many of each color they have. Explain that graphs are an easy way to represent this information. Talk about the graph, asking questions such as, "How many more pink Smarties are there than green?"