M & M Memories

    There is just something special about M&Ms.  My earliest memory of them is back when I was four.  My family was staying with Nanny and Pop Pop.  I don't remember how often we had them, but there were evenings when Trisha, Nanny, and I had M&M parties.  We'd all sit together on her chair and eat    M & Ms and watch tv.  I loved spending that time together close on her chair.  I loved eating M&M after M&M after M&M.  There was so many beautiful colors to chose from, and they all tasted simply delightful.


Growing up, my dad's parents lived a couple hours south of us.  For a bunch of kids, that is a long drive over the mountains.  Nearly every time, we'd stop and get gas, a large Pepsi, and a large bag of M&Ms to entertain us on the way.  Since I was the oldest child in the car, I often got to divvy out the goods.  From what I remember, I was honest about the sharing of these delicious morsels.  I know that when Thomas was really little, Trisha and I got more than than him.  The same thing happened when Taylor came along.  But I think, at least I hope, I shared equally with Trisha.




    At my wedding there were little pouches of M&Ms on the tables.  I guess I can now admit that I bought them after Halloween on sale.  Thus they were over a month old when people ate them at my wedding.  Sherry lovingly bagged up all of those delicious sweet treats for our guests.

M&Ms are my friend Kari's favorite candy.  A couple of years ago, she made a batch of M&M cookies and shared them with Kyle and me.  We were a little confused as to why there was a slice of bread in the bag with the cookies.  The bread didn't really taste good.  We later found out that the bread helps keep the cookies soft.  The bread will dry out first before the cookies.  I'm sure there is a science lesson in there some where, but I'm just glad it worked.

    

 What math manipulative is more exciting than M&Ms?  In eighth grade, my teach Mrs. Debbie had us do a whole packet of work just on M&Ms with graphing, ratios, fractions, and who knows what else. I don't remember every lesson I ever did in math, but I remember being totally involved in that one.





A couple of years ago, I used M&Ms to teach fractions.  I wanted to make sure the kids were getting the right fractions, so I sorted them and put the same number of each color into bags.  These pictures were from the LONG process of sorting, counting, recounting, and sorting again into bags.  The kids LOVED it!  The process was colorful, but long enough that I wanted to document the process with photos.

    What is more motivating that M&Ms?  To help my kids as we reviewed for the STAR test, I had a large mason jar full of M&Ms at my front table.  That way the students could stare at it all day long if they wanted.  During the many review lessons, if a student got a question right, they got a ticket.  They got to guess how many M&Ms there were in the jar.  The week before the test, I'd start giving clues to the number.  I'd tell them things like it is an odd number.  The number is more than a hundred.  The number doesn't end in a zero.  You know, math clues that in of themselves was a review.