I love discovering totally new things. Graphing is not “new” but the idea that my preschooler can graph say M&M’s amazes me! Beth from Keesler Chaos was wonderful and opened my eyes! Snack time will never be the same!  She graciously offered to show us her graphing activity, and included free printables.  Just click on the chart images for larger printable versions.   I can see us adapting the charts for handfuls of dried fruit (how many raisins do you have compared to dried cherries, etc.).

Here is the graphing activity in her words and pictures.
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My youngest, Mac, is quite a character! When his sisters where little, they ran to have their school time with Mom, but Mac, he’d rather be doing flips off the couch! I scoured the house looking for things I thought would attract him to his math lessons. We sorted dinos, cars, and action heros. That was fun once or twice, and then he was off and running! And then I dragged out the candy stash.

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He sorted M&Ms, Smarties, jellybeans and anything else I could find. As long as there was eating at the end, he was ready! We started by separating the different colors of candy from each other.  Then we started graphing. He lines up each color in their own row, and we have a chat.

Which color has the most? Which has the least?

Are any colors equal?

We talked about what he’d need to do to make two columns equal (subtract or add to a pile).

We could add a red, but what if you ate a yellow? What happened?

I laminated my charts so that we could re-use them over and over again with a dry erase marker.  We compared columns and my elementary aged daughter gets in on the fun first graphing, practicing making the equal, greater than or less than signs when comparing two lines of candies.

We also worked on patterns.  Never had my kids enjoy learning math as much as they do with candy!

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Thanks again Beth and Mac from Keesler Chaos!

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