In the UK, we have chocolate covered sweets called Revels. Inside each bag are different-flavoured chocolates: Maltesers, plain chocolate, coffee, orange, toffee, and chocolate-covered raisins. They are delicious and great for a yummy sorting activity.
I set the children the task of sorting the Revels into different flavours without eating them.
We talked about how we could tell the difference between the flavours. The first method was how they looked, so we sorted by size.
We could easily find the plain chocolates and raisin-covered chocolates because of their distinctive shapes.
The Maltesers were also relatively easy to spot as they were a little larger than the other round varieties.
The final three were more tricky. Z wanted to weigh them. They all weighed between 1 and 3 grams, so we sorted accordingly.
Not satisfied with this method, we accidentally found that they made different noises when dropped on the table. We decided that the heavier sounding drop was probably the toffee.
Once we had our six piles, it was time to test.
The coffee, orange and toffee were not very well sorted, but we'd had a really good attempt and thought of some great sorting ideas along the way.
Would you have done anything different?
Can you think of any other candy we could sort?
If you enjoyed this activity, don't forget to try my other candy science experiments for kids.
Last Updated on March 24, 2025 by Emma Vanstone
Trisha @ Inspiration Laboratories says
You already know I love this activity. Now I need to try those candies. 🙂
ScienceSparks says
Do you not have anything similar?
Mammasaurus says
I love the idea of sorting by not only size but also weight and fillings, I wouldn't have thought of that. Reminds me of separating my smarties as a child!
Spillover team says
We think the difficult task was to convince them NOT to eat the chocolate!
Devra says
Is there any type of candy in the US that would work for this? We don't have that type here.