Giant Car Graphing

Thinking about all the types of toy vehicles we have got me thinking about graphing them.  This is the first time I had introduced graphs to the girls, so I needed it to be pretty easy.  I decided to me a giant bar graph on the kitchen floor with painters tape.  Then the girls could make the bars by separating the vehicles by type.  (Please ignore the towels in the background waiting to be washed; it is laundry day).


So I started by making the lines for the graph.  I told the girls each tile would be a measure of 5, so only 5 cars could go in each tile.

They started categorizing the cars.  For a while we had SUV's and vans separate, but it was hard for the girls to tell the difference with some of their toys, so we combined them.

We actually didn't have room for all the cars, so we just stopped after we ran out of other vehicles.  Once we had them all in lines, the girls counted the vehicles in each line, and I helped them make a graph on a piece of paper.

As soon as they finished the graph they just wanted to play with the cars on the blue tape!  Then Eli got up, and the cars went everywhere!