With the Easter holiday just around the corner, educators and families everywhere will be scrambling to gather their best resources. With an abundance of jelly beans in stores at many price points, they can easily become the best manipulatives for little hands to complete educational and crafty tasks. They also double as a quick treat when kids are hungry! Check out 20 engaging activities to incorporate into your classroom today!
1. Jelly Bean Estimation
Using three different-sized jelly bean sketches, kids will practice the skill of estimation. Once they fill a jelly bean, they will check to see if their original estimation was correct.
Learn More: Crystal McGinnis
2. Money Activity
Young students will be able to practice their money sense and word problems using this simplistic jelly bean worksheet. When it comes to educational Easter activities, this is a real-life way to help them use math.
Learn More: Crystal McGinnis
3. Jelly Bean Tasting Experiment
This is certainly one activity that your kids will love! This Easter activity idea has kids working with a partner to predict, taste, and record their findings. It’s a sensory experiment that they will never forget!
Learn More: Childhood 101
4. Faith-Based Jelly Bean Bracelet
If you’re a teacher at a Christian school or a homeschool mom of faith, you’ll love this craftivity. It includes a short poem that provides a symbolic meaning for each jelly bean color. Kids will read the poem and string the beans onto a piece of fishing line.
Learn More: Joyful Homemaking
5. Jelly Bean STEM Challenge
Challenge students to create a Peeps trap with this jelly bean activity! Offer each child the same number of toothpicks and beans and parameters, and watch their ingenuity flourish.
Learn More: Green Kid Crafts
6. Dissolving Jelly Bean Experiment
Using different colored jelly beans, students can make hypotheses and then test them. They will soak the jelly beans in chosen solutions to see how each one affects them, and if color is a factor.
Learn More: Lessons 4 Little Ones
7. Measuring Practice
Plastic eggs filled with different numbers of jelly beans become a simple activity to get to grips with the measurement of weight. Students will use a scale to weigh and then order each of the eggs from heaviest to lightest. Have them record their findings on a sheet of paper.
Learn More: Lessons 4 Little Ones
8. Jelly Bean Coding
This basic coding activity is a fun introduction to STEM. While it doesn’t include a computer, it’s a fun printable that helps kids understand the bare necessities of this all-important skill. Students will utilize the jelly bean code at the bottom to trace their way out of the maze. When they’re done, challenge them to create their own jelly bean codes.
Learn More: Team Cartwright
9. Jelly Bean Sort
Preschool students will sort a bucket of jelly beans by color. To gain practice with motor skills, have them use tweezers to pick up the beans and put them in water bottles labeled with the appropriate color. Find a similar idea linked below.
Learn More: Play to Learn Preschool
10. Drawing Color Match
Using this free printable, kids will draw and say the names of each jelly bean. This is an important and simple activity for kids to practice dexterity, motor skills, and color matching.
Learn More: Active Littles
11. Create a Catapult
Challenge older students to create a jelly bean catapult. Tongue depressors, plastic spoons, and rubber bands make easy supplies to see who can launch their bean the farthest.
Learn More: Joy in the Works
12. Butterfly Take Home
A plastic bag and a clothespin become an adorable Easter butterfly! Kids fill the bags with their favorite flavor of jelly beans and then decorate the clothes pins to resemble a butterfly. This would make a great take-home gift!
Learn More: Crafty Morning
13. Jelly Bean Probability
Let students naturally discover the probability of jelly bean combinations that they might get in a bag. This worksheet allows them to practice this math skill using the color of jelly beans.
Learn More: Feels Like Home
14. Bean Sorting STEM Challenge
The Easter factory got mixed up with jelly beans and regular beans. Tell your students that they need their help! Using a set of constraints, students will design a bean-sorting contraption to help the Easter factory.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
15. Grow Lollipops
Little ones will love this cute jelly bean craft! They will “plant” jelly beans in a paper cup. They will come back to school the next day to see that lollipops have magically sprouted!
Learn More: Hip 2 Save
16. Jumping Jelly Bean Art
This is one fun jelly bean craft that you want to add to your repertoire! Kids can get up and jump as they shake jelly beans and paint between two pans lined with paper. The beauty of this project is that it gets kids moving, creating, and having fun!
Learn More: Fantastic Fun and Learning
17. Fun Jelly Bean Graphing
Each of your students will get a plastic egg full of jelly beans. They will then use this simple, low-prep worksheet to graph the combination of colors they received and answer a few questions.
Learn More: New Teacher in Town
18. Jelly Bean Playdough
Have kids create a sensory dough using a simple salt dough recipe. When it’s finished, they can choose their favorite color jelly beans to add to the mix and create a new sensory experience that’s kid-safe and completely edible.
Learn More: Unsophisticook
19. Jammin’ Jellies
This is an entertaining activity for older students. They will sit in pairs facing one another with an Easter basket or bucket filled with Easter grass. They will then take turns tossing jelly beans into each other’s buckets for a total time of one minute. Whichever team banks the most beans wins!
Learn More: Andrea Knight
20. Addition Task Cards
When it comes to jelly bean activities for kids, this is a great one for math. These jelly bean addition task cards are perfect for practicing basic math. Have students use jelly beans with them to act as manipulatives.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
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