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Snack Graphing, beginner bar graphs

January 10, 2011 Ticia 10 Comments

Hi! Future Ticia 2023 here, I’m updating this Snack Graphing post to not have absolutely terrible pictures (though they’re still not great), and actually have a printable you can use (hopefully provided I can find it from over 10 years ago). I now return you to past Ticia of 2011, I’ll occasionally pop back in with more comments.

We’ve done some graphing before, but not huge amounts.  Partially because our math curriculum doesn’t really cover graphing yet, and partially because I’m lazy. And laziness was the gestalt for this STEM activity, particularly math lesson.  Mainly, I didn’t want to fix the kids breakfast, and I remembered Phyllis over at All Things Beautiful writing a post about making snacks and using it to write a recipe.

Snack graphing

(there are affiliate links in here)

Well, I knew my kids couldn’t write the recipe, so I made up a worksheet for them real fast.

And of course, right after I’d printed up our first recipe I realized that I hadn’t laid out those ingredients, so I made a second one.
No really, I made two different ones for this.  And even after we’d started I realized I’d forgotten to leave a place for M&M’s on the chart.

Snack Graphing Supplies

Printable (provided Future Ticia 2023 finds it, I did and updated it slightly, it’s on my subscriber page, join my newsletter)

Future Ticia 2023 is adding sarcastic comments in parantheses

Snack supplies: popcorn (I also love making air-popped popcorn), Cinnamon Toast Crunch, mini marshmallows (I guess most sugar cereals have this), jelly beans (what was I thinking), M&Ms (so much sugar), Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops (since I know we very rarely had most of these things in the house, how did we have all of these ingredients for this?)

Snack Graphing lesson

Before I let them have at it I set up a few ground rules.  Mainly you had to have at least one scoop of each item, and whenever you did the scoops you had to then make sure to color in one square for each scoop.  That took some demonstrating, because as I said I haven’t done as many graphs as I should have.

putting together their snack graphs


What followed was a frenzied few minutes of happily getting as much food as they could fit into those little bowls. Hmph, it won’t let me watermark the other one without messing up the picture.

And yes, that is Princess wearing a tank top in the middle of January, I bought it for her earlier this week thinking “summer clothes, that I can fiddle with,” and she’s refused to take it off since I bought it.  That girl……..

final snack graphs

And they happily munched on their breakfast all through school that day.

Snack graphing extension activities

We did do some extension activities after our first quick lesson.

  • What did you have the most of?
  • What did you have the least of?
  • What was the most common choice for everyone?
  • Did any of the foods have the same number?

Superman kept pointing out that he had “no jelly beans, because I don’t like jelly beans.”  He was very worried about this, but was quite happy to eat the other food.

All in all, that was a great math lesson for my preschoolers.

Snack graphing for preschool

More odd math lessons we’ve done

As a general rule, I don’t tend to do lots of math lessons on here. Our math lessons are rather boring, and it’s not where most of my creative ideas pop out. Especially once the kids got older and their math got more complex.

  • Sunflower seed math
  • Multiplication book
  • Simple math counting game
  • Math gameschooling
  • Best Math website
Snack graphing preschool kindergarten math stem

STEM kindergarten, math, preschool

Comments

  1. Debbie says

    January 10, 2011 at 3:20 pm

    What a fun way to learn about graphing!

    Reply
  2. MaryAnne says

    January 10, 2011 at 3:42 pm

    You are such a fun mom! It sounds like Princess shares Emma's taste in clothing…

    Reply
  3. Phyllis says

    January 10, 2011 at 4:07 pm

    What a nice idea of turning the lesson into graphing!

    Reply
  4. Joyful Learner says

    January 10, 2011 at 4:29 pm

    I love how we can bounce ideas off each other! I might try this with different apples when we have a playgroup!

    Reply
  5. Wonder Mom says

    January 10, 2011 at 4:44 pm

    Food ALWAYS makes math…er, reading…um, science…pretty much ANYTHING fun, doesn't it?

    Reply
  6. Christy says

    January 10, 2011 at 5:06 pm

    My kids would love this. It's REALLY cold here and my daughter is in a tank top too! It's a good thing our house is warm.

    Reply
  7. Raising a Happy Child says

    January 10, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    Cool snacks! I am tempted to email you Anna's current fashion preferences. It doesn't include tank tops but features proudly leopard print leggings with bright purple skirt and green top.

    Reply
  8. littlewondersdays says

    January 11, 2011 at 1:53 am

    What a fun and great way to learn about graphing. Sassyfras is SOOOO opinionated about her clothes and my boys seriously don't care.

    Reply
  9. An Almost Unschooling Mom says

    January 11, 2011 at 4:43 am

    So, I need to reread this…did you say you were too lazy to make breakfast, so instead sat down to create terrific worksheets, that turned breakfast into a math lesson? I'm not sure you understand the meaning of lazy 🙂

    Reply
  10. Kim says

    January 11, 2011 at 2:04 pm

    I love this idea! We do a lot of graphs, but I haven't done one kike this. Thanks for the idea.

    Reply

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Ticia Adventures in Mommydom Hi, I'm Ticia! This is the adventures of my family in life and learning. Follow along with us as we share our adventures. We're having a lot of fun and learning as we go.

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