Math lessons are educational and sweet when jelly beans are used to teach sequencing, graphing, and geometry lessons.

It turns out that jelly bans aren’t just for Easter! Did you know that April 22nd is National Jelly Bean Day? While no one seems to know exactly who invented the very first jelly bean, these descendents of Turkish Delight have been around since at least the 19th century. This year, celebrate National Jelly Bean Day with your students with math lessons that teach patterns, graphing, and geometry.

Content Areas: sequencing, graphing, geometry

Jelly Bean Patterns

Materials:

• Several bags of jelly beans divided by color – provide each student with three or four of each color. (Note, if sugar is a worry, purchase sugar-free jelly beans)
• Pattern cards (make them up ahead of time): draw jelly bean color patterns on index cards for students to complete.

Examples:

Red-Red-Pink-Red-Red-_______-________ (Pink-Red)

Green-Yellow-Yellow-Green-Green-Yellow-________-_________ (Yellow-Green)

White-Green-Yellow-Green-Purple-Green-Pink- (__________) (Green)

Activities:

Place students in pairs in order to determine which two jelly beans would complete each of the patterns found on the pattern cards. (Hint: Combining written words, patterns, and hands-on activities will appeal to children with different learning styles

Allow students to have a jelly bean treat for each correct card.

Jelly Bean Graphing

Materials:

• Poster board
• Markers
• Yard sticks (for drawing straight lines)
• Construction paper (for bar and pie graphs)
• Large compass (for group creating pie graph)

Activities:

As a Class: While the students are working on their jelly bean pattern cards, the teacher should go around the room and poll students on their favorite jelly bean flavor for each student. The teacher should record each of the answers on the board at the front of the room.

Example:

Purple – 3

Green – 2

White – 0

Yellow – 5

Pink – 7

Red – 5

Orange – 2

Don’t like any flavor - 2

In Small Groups:

• Provide one sheet of poster board, one yard stick, and multiple markers for each group.
• Assign each group a specific type of graph (bar, line, pie, etc.)
• Have each group create a graph to represent the class preferences
• Ask students share their graphs with the class.

(Alternative: Have several brand names of jellybeans available, and graph brandname preferences)

Jelly-Desic Domes

Materials:

• Bowls of jelly beans
• Toothpicks

As a class: If time permits, tell students a bit about the twentieth century American architect Buckmeister Fuller, who popularized the geodesic dome as an architectural form. Explain to students that geodesic domes are spherical structures created through the repetition of a single shape, such as a triangle. Explain that the resulting dome is stronger than any of the original shapes so that a resulting dome can be quite large. Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center, Walt Disney World is a great example to show students.

Individually: Have students create their own “jelly-desic” domes by combining triangular shapes made with jellybeans and toothpicks (a jelly bean at each angle, toothpicks for sides). Again, this is fantastic geometry lesson for students with kinesthetic or visual-spatial learning styles.

Have fun sharing and then eating the architecture!