In this special Halloween-themed episode of Counselor Chat, we’re diving into how we can use our leftover Halloween candy in our school counseling program!
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
Why You’ll Love This Episode:
Get ready for actionable, easy-to-implement ideas that make good use of Halloween leftovers and add a playful touch to your counseling sessions. Whether it’s using candy to spark introductions, teamwork, or just a bit of fun competition, these activities are sure to keep students engaged and learning.
Have your own ideas of how to use your extra Halloween candies that you want to share? I’d love to hear them!
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Carol: You're listening to the Counselor Chat podcast, a show for school counselors looking for easy to implement strategies, how to tips, collaboration, and a little spark of joy. I'm Carol Miller, your host. I'm a full time school counselor and the face behind counseling essentials. I'm all about creating simplified systems, data driven practices, and using creative approaches to engage students. If you're looking for a little inspiration to help you make a big impact on student growth and success, your you're in the right place because we're better together. Ready to chat. Let's dive in.
Carol: Hi everyone, it's Carol. Welcome back to another episode of Counselor Chat. Today I thought we would talk about what we can do with all that leftover Halloween candy because today is Halloween and starting tomorrow you guys might actually have some leftover candy. So before you throw it away or you donate it to wherever, why don't you bring it in to your office because there are some really fun ways that we can use candy in our counseling program. So guys, are you ready? Let's just dive in to some of these great ideas. Now I know that you probably are all really familiar with the little candy introductions. That's where we bring in a candy like MMS or Skittles or something that has like a variety of colors and then we give each color, it represents a different question that the kids need to answer about themselves. So for example, if you're using M&Ms, you could put on the board like red, share a favorite hobby. Yellow, describe your dream vacation. Green, share something on your bucket list. Blue, talk about your favorite food. And brown, let's see, what do we have for brown? Brown is talk about your first childhood memory. When we use candy, we really are encouraging kids to share a little bit about themselves while having a bit of fun. And even if kids don't eat the candy, that's fine because they can still participate by just matching the questions with the colors candies that they have. So. And then they could always give their candy away if they don't eat them. But it is a really fun way for kids just to learn a little bit more about each other. Another fun activity, if you are talking about challenges or growth mindset or anything like that, you can use the Candy Tower Challenge. Just find small candies that are like mini marshmallows or gumdrops or gummy bears and then also bring in a handful of toothpicks for every kid, for every group. So you're going to divide all your class into small groups. I know that we always get the Little bags of gummy bears. And they work really, they work great. And so if you divide your class and give them maybe because there's not very many gummy bears in that, maybe give each kid little thing of gummy bears and then, you know, a little handful of toothpicks, but put four to six kids in a group and you're going to give them the goal of working together to build the tallest, most stable tower within a set amount of time. I usually give the kids about 10 minutes. This type of activity can really encourage collaboration, problem solving, creative thinking. And then after they're all done, you can just discuss what strategies work best and how they can apply what they learned into when they're working in a team in another setting. If you are talking about growth mindset, you could say, well, how does this relate to growth mindset? So just add on those questions at the end that make the connection between what they're doing and really what you want them to learn. Another super fun one is called Candy Bar Connection. And this activity really helps the team identify their personal strengths and find the commonalities that they have with each other. So for this, you can use a variety of your little candy bars like Snickers, Twix, Reese's Kit, Katsu, even those little Twizzlers, Milk Duds. But for each one, you are going to assign each type of candy that you bring in a different personality trait for. So, for example, Snickers, Snickers, you can write, this person is a problem solver. Twix. They're a team player. Reese's could be a creative thinker. KitKat is good at collaboration. And you're just going to have all these personality traits up on the board and then you're going to have each team member once again. You're going to be breaking the kids up into smaller groups. But then have each team member really select a candy bar that resonates with them based on maybe the personality trait. And then they're going to share with their group why they chose it. From there, you can actually have your team disperse and let your kids match up based on who has similarities along with them. And so maybe all the kids that chose Reese's go to one group, all the ones that chose the Snickers to another, all the ones that chose the Twix to another group, and that way they can share and see who they're most alike with. Share their ideas, share their stories, and then you can mix them up. You can even say, all right, we're going to work on A little problem together. And I want somebody who's a sticker, someone who's a Twix, somebody who's a Reese, someone who's a KitKat. And they have to form groups based on the candy that they've chosen. When we do this, we're also looking at not only the commonalities that we have with each other, but also understanding our own unique strengths and how we are bringing something to the table. As they're in these little groups and you have them broken down by the different candies, you can say, well, how does a problem solver and a team player and a creative thinking thinker and maybe someone who's really good at collaboration, how do they best work together in a group and really let them think about that and how they can best work with the people that are around them. This is really great for kids to start thinking about because as they get older in school, they're going to have to come up with probably some groups to work on problems themselves or projects and things like that. And they need to know how they can form a group, who they can think about, who's going to be best to help work together. So I really love these type of activities so that each kid knows where they are, who they have a lot of similarities with and who really complements them. Another really fun candy game is to guess the candy flavor. So you can divide your class up once again into small teams and blindfold one member from each team. Then have them try different candy flavors. Maybe it's a different jelly bean, maybe it's a piece of a Snickers bar, maybe it's a gummy bear and try to figure out what flavor it is. Now you also want team members that are watching and helping to help describe the flavor without really saying the name directly. So if you have a kiddo who's blindfolded and they're trying to figure out that they're eating maybe a Milky Way's bar and they have just a little sliver of the Milky Way, their teammates are trying to describe that flavor. Well, it's chocolatey and it has caramel and there's a little bit of nougat in there, but they can't say the word Milky Way. When you are doing this activity, you're actually building communication skills and really creative descriptive skills as well as some trust. Because participants really need to rely on each other to succeed with this one. I have to say, you might want to avoid those things that are now not based in case you do have a student that and as well as the other. The last activity too, you want to avoid maybe some of the nut based ones in case you have students that are allergic to nuts. Another is basically a candy trivia relay. And this can be fun for no matter what topic that you're, you're learning about. So maybe it's coping skills and you could have some questions made up about different coping strategies or coping skills. Maybe some true false questions, but you want to have some prepared trivia questions based on whatever topic that you guys are studying or working on. You're going to then divide your class into two or three teams and kind of set up a relay rate, a relay race. So each team is going to form a line and they're going to race to answer the trivia questions one at a time. And if they answer correctly, they get to pick a candy prize for their team. So you're going to have. What I usually like to do is have the kids on one end, they're going to race down to the other. The person who picks up the trivia question that I have gets the first shot at answering. And if they get it right, they get to pick a prize. And so we're just going to keep going through trying to win as many candy bars as possible while the kids are waiting for their turn to go through the relay. Relay race, you really want them to cheer on their teammates, maybe listen to the questions too because there's always the phone a friend option that I have in my room where they can call back to their teammate. Do you know what the answer is if they don't? And it's just a really fun way to have some learning, get the learning in, have the kids really show what they know and once again, get rid of some of that candy that you have. Another candy game is to give each student maybe four or five pieces of candy. Now for this you want to use some smaller things. Not really anything too big. Maybe it could be some Skittles, maybe one of those little thing of Whoppers. Maybe it's some. I don't know if I said Starburst, but maybe some Starburst, but you want some smaller candies for this. Maybe it's a lollipop or two, but you want to give them maybe between three and five pieces of candy each. Once you do that, you're going to have your kids kind of mix and mingle with each other and engage in a really short conversation with as many people as possible. You're going to encourage them to introduce themselves, just engage in basic pleasantries. And engage in the form of conversation. And what the. The goal is is to cause the other person that they're talking to to say the word yes. And every time their partner utters the word yes, then you get to pick a candy from their pile. So you're going to have kids that have maybe seven or eight pieces of candy. Other kids maybe have one, but you want them to mix and mingle with as many people as possible and really try to get as much candy as they can. And once again, they do that by having a conversation with somebody and trying to get that person to say yes. Like, my favorite color is green? Is your favorite color green, too? And if they say yes, then you take a piece of candy from their pile. What I really love about this game is that you're really encouraging kids to talk with one another, to interact with maybe other kids that they don't necessarily always interact with having those conversations, but really be pretty cognizant of listening for the response and trying to get people to answer them. So they kind of have to think of questions that maybe this person would answer yes to. So I really just love that because sometimes our kids don't really talk to one another or they don't know what to say to one another, especially kids that they don't work with very often. So this is a great way to kind of break down some walls and just really improve those communication skills. Now, the last game is a basic candy sort. And what I love to do with this one is I like to use candy corn and M M's, and so I'll have little thing of candy corn and maybe a package or two of M M's, and I'm going to mix them together for each team. And so I might break my teams up into four, six kids. You're also going to need a straw for every person for this activity. So, you know, go and get some straws from your cafeteria, one for each kid, and then you're going to have them at their, you know, a group of tables, and they're going to be working together. So once again, you're going to have four. Let's just say four. But between four and six kids working together at a table, they're going to have some candy corn and a bag or two of M and M candies and the straws. You can even have some clear cups if you want. Probably like seven per team. But you could also do it without the cups because sometimes it's hard to get cups unless you go into the health office and you take Cups, or you have cups from home, and I'm talking about just the little ones because we are going to be sorting the M M's and the candy corn by color into these different cups. Or you could just use even post it notes on the table so that they have to sort each color of the candy onto the post it note. So if you don't have the cups, that's fine, but they're going to keep their hands behind their back and they're going to use their straws and their mouths only to complete this challenge. What they really want to do is they want to try to blow the M and M or the candy corn into its pile into its section. So if you're using cups, you can maybe tape the cups down sideways on the table and they blow the candy corn or the M and M into the cup. Or like I said, even just small, little post it note, seven of them on the table. And you could label them if you have all the same color post it notes like red, blue, green, brown, yellow, candy corn. And once again, they're all going to just kind of blow with their hands behind their back, and they're going to try to get the right colors in the right area. It can be kind of hard, but it is fun. And it's really fun to watch as well because there could be snorting going on with them trying to blow through this, blow through the straws. There could be candy going all over the place depending on how hard they blow. But this is a really fun game, and this one doesn't really. It sounds like it could take a long time, but it's probably about five minutes to give them the directions and to sort it up and get it all organized on the table. About 5 minutes to complete the challenge, and then you'll need a couple minutes to actually debrief as well. But as you are going through, when they're done, you're going to ask them, what did you enjoy most about the activity? What was challenging? How did you work as a team? How could this have been improved? Did you have a plan before you even started? And if you did, how did it go? Did your plan change? If so, how? And did you communicate at all during this challenge? Did you do it verbally or non verbally? And what is the one thing that you can take away from this activity? How can you use this in the future? And this activity is really going to build that team cohesion, communication, cooperation, and creativity, as well as maybe even working on some planning strategies. So this is a really great activity for your kids. So those are just a few of the fan favorites that we have in my school or that I've used in the past for using up that Halloween candy when Halloween is over. So once again, my friends don't throw away that candy because there are plenty of uses. Once again, I'm going to kind of run through these because I know I went a million miles an hour trying to get all this in. But the first one, once again, is that candy introductions where you are using M&MS. Or Skittles where each color they're going to say something about themselves. You could do that candy tower challenge with small squishy candies like gumdrops or mini marshmallows or gummy bears and some toothpicks. There's the candy bar connection where you're giving the candy and a personality trait identity and breaking the kids up for that you're going to have. The other one is guess the candy flavor where you're going to give them a little piece of the candy and try them. Try to guess what it is. Or you could do the candy trivia relay. So have them do the relay race to win a candy bar, but answering a trivia question of your choice for whatever topic that you may be working on. We have the candy cane sort where we're sorting the MMS into different colors as well as the candy corn using only straws. And then the last one is the candy game where you are really trying to win as many pieces of candy as possible by getting the other person to say yes to the questions that you ask them or in the conversation that you're having with them. So I hope this was a really fun way to use some of those extra pieces of candy that you have or to take advantage of the 50% off sale that they're going to have at Target tomorrow morning. So go and get that candy, have some fun and really enjoy your time with the kids. If you have other suggestions of how to use that extra candy, well, I would love to hear about it and I'm sure that our listeners would love to as well. So send me an email@carolounselingessentials.org because I'd love to hear how you use candy as well. Anyway, until next time, I hope you had a really great Halloween. I hope you have fun using up that extra Halloween candy and have a great week. Bye for now.
Carol: Thanks for listening to today's episode of Counselor Chat. All of the links I talked about can be found in the show notes and at counselingessentials.org podcast. Be sure to hit follow or subscribe.
Carol: On your favorite podcast player.
Carol: And if you would be so kind to leave a review, I'd really appreciate it. Want to connect? Send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram at counselingessentials. Until next time. Can't wait till we chat.
Carol: Bye for now.