Graphing

A real enjoyable math activity is graphing with the students.  It is important to introduce graphing with children, it helps to teach them counting skills, how to organize data, and gives them a voice in the classroom.  There are many different types of graphs.

Above, I used a pictograph with the kids to graph boys vs girls.   My Kindergarten classroom is still entertained by my use of stick people four months later.   Once a week (at least) we graph their favorite centers, favorite colors, the daily weather temperature, type of weather we have for the day, favorite animals, favorite foods, least favorite foods, height, shoe size, how many letters in their name, birthdays, etc.

In November we started to graph the daily temperature.  My Kindergarteners were beginning to put up resistance to wearing their coats outside.  I'm pretty sure I have a few Kindergarteners who would argue that its to hot to wear their coats... even if we were standing in a snow drift up to their eyeballs.  For that reason the "weatherman" now "texts" us how to dress for outside.  I text the weather service on my cell phone, and we receive our text message during our circle time.  If it is 35 degrees or lower, we have indoor recess, if it is 65-35 we must wear our coats.  95-65 we can choose to wear our coats or not. 95 or higher, it is too not to play outside.