Charlie And The Chocolate Factory – Units of Measurement

There’s nothing like sweets to get a sweet-toothed person excited about learning something maths-ish, so as part of our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory week, I bought a mixed bag of candy – I wanted chocolates, but apparently we aren’t close enough to Halloween yet, so no one in my town sells the mixed bags of chocolates yet!

This is a super easy activity, involving a mix of candy and a ruler.

In Ameli’s notebook I made three columns: the name of the candy she was measuring, Inches and CM.

She measured each bit of candy first in Inches then in CM, writing down the numbers for each. I didn’t want her to open all the candy so we included packaging and rounded up to the nearest half CM or Inch.

Once we had all the measurements, she was able to eat the shortest (based on numbers) and arrange the sweets in size order, again, based on measurements rather than by looking at the sweets themselves.

I wasn’t sure how this activity would go down – as Charlie says, seeing other people eating chocolate bars was torture, and I thought working with sweets she couldn’t eat would be a bit torturous too, but she handled it really well and din’t moan about it too much at all!

Walking to school in the mornings, Charlie could see great slabs of chocolate piled up high in the shop windows, and he would stop and stare and press his nose against the glass, his mouth watering like mad. Many times a day, he would see other children taking bars of creamy chocolate out of their pockets and munching them greedily, and that, of course, was pure torture. ¹

I’m quite pleased with this Charlie and the Chocolate Factory candy measurements activity. It’s introduced units of measurements, and a bit of numeracy, and gives us something to build on.

Find more Charlie & The Chocolate Factory activities here.

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• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – DIY Jazzies
• Make up words like Roald Dahl
• Easy Giant Paper Candies For Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• 10 Top Buys For Roald Dahl Fans
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Chocolate Bath Salts
• Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roundup
• Food Activities Crafts To Celebrate Roald Dahl Day