April 22nd is National Jelly Bean Day and we’re celebrating this sweet treat with reading fun and games! So grab your leftover jelly beans from Easter and have some fun at home!
Jelly bean activities!
Jelly bean graphs: have your child sort a bag of jelly beans by color and use a graph to compare the number of jelly beans in each color category. Use key words such a more than, less than, same, different, equal to.
STEM building structures with jelly beans:All you need are some toothpicks and jelly beans! Challenge your children to build various structures by using jelly beans to connect the toothpicks. This is a great opportunity to work on following directions with spatial concepts and colors. If you want to allow for more creativity, have your children develop their own plans for structures and describe their final products to you. To work on sequencing, have your children give you steps to making different structures.
Taste test: You can do jelly bean taste tests many different ways. One of our favorites includes blindfolding your child and giving them a jelly bean to try. Once they try it, have them use descriptive words to tell you about how the jelly bean tastes and then have them guess the flavor! Create a family competition to see who can guess the most flavors!
Guessing game: Fill up an Easter egg or small jar with jelly beans. Have your child feel the weight and shake the object to help them guess how many jelly beans are inside. After they guess, take all the jelly beans out and count to see how close they were.
Emoji cupcakes: Pull out your favorite cupcake recipe and get busy in the kitchen! After your cupcakes are done, cover the top with frosting and use jelly beans to convey different emotions. Talk about these emotions with your children (e.g., what makes them happy, what makes them sad, etc.)
Jelly bean books!
How Many Jelly Beans? by Andrea Menotti creates a fun environment for learning about numbers in a sweet way!
The Jelly Bean Fun Book by Karen Capucilli uses this sweet treat to teach children about early learning concepts such as colors, shapes, numbers, and more!
Jellybeans by Kiersten L Hall is a fun and colorful book used to teach children about individual differences and how to come together to celebrate our unique qualities!
The Giant Jelly Bean Jar by Marcie Aboff is a great book that teaches children to be confident
The Jellybeans Series by Laura Numeroff teaches children that just like jellybeans, friendship comes in many flavors!
Enjoy your jelly beans; a welcome treat during this stressful time! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to see what activities (jelly bean and more!) we’re doing at home and in our Telehealth sessions.