Math is very important and nowadays, so little time is spent teaching mathematics in the Kindergarten classroom. It is truly a sad thing, indeed. In our class we use math regularly and it is included in many activities. One of the most favourite Workshop activities is our graphing activities. The children have become very adept at graphing a variety of media because math has been incorporated into our daily lives.
A simple graphing activity that can be done at home is a jelly bean graph. All it takes is a small handful of jelly beans and…a graph template! (click on the word template to download one) Have your child sort the jelly beans into the various colours (sorting is an important comparing and contrasting skill) then place the jelly beans, one bean per picture, onto the graph. Using crayons, colour the corresponding jelly beans. Now, count each coloured bean and write the number in the small box to indicate the number. Do this for each colour. Voila! That's it!
Ask questions based on the graph. Questions could include:
- How many of the --- jelly beans did you have?
- Which colour did you have the most of?
- Which colour did you have the least of?
- How many --- and --- did you have altogether?
