We have been doing a lot of graphing in our class. In addition to our weekly "Today's Question" during math time (once or twice a week) and our daily weather graph during morning meeting, we have been doing a few special graphing projects in recent weeks. While learning the letter Tt, we made turkey pictures and graphed how many different colored feathers were on it. For the letter Hh, we decorated the upper and lowercase letter with different colored hearts and graphed our results. This week, the children did a similar activity involving gumballs.
First, they were given two dice to roll. One dice had different colors on it and the other had numbers 1-3 on it. Each roll would tell them how many gumballs to color of each color (ex. if they rolled a 2 and a purple, they would color in 2 purple gumballs. If they rolled a 3 and a green, they would color in 3 green gumballs). They needed to keep rolling and coloring the gumballs until all gumballs were colored in. After finishing this, they needed to record their data in the sentences at the bottom of the sheet.
Last, they needed to transfer this data onto a graph. After finishing their graph, they were asked some questions about which one had the most, if there were any that were equal, and which one was the least.
When your children take graphs home from school, ask them different questions about their papers.
See if they can explain the steps of what they needed to do. Ask them different questions about the results of the graph (which had more, less, most, least or if any were equal). We will continue to work on graphing throughout the year.
