My husband didn’t eat many “Sugar cereals” (as he calls them) when he was a kid. I, on the other hand, ate cinnamon toast crunch, reese’s puffs, fruit loops, and all the tasty stuff on the cereal aisle. So when I brought home “Fruity Cheerios” the other day my husband had a skeptical look on his face when he said “these taste like fruit loops.” So I respond, “Yeah, they’re great right?” And he responded with a comment about it being a sugar cereal, but I disagreed and I still claim that its Cheerios so it can’t be that bad for you.

Anyway, all that to say, in my Kindergarten class I LOVED to graph colorful snacks like fruit loops, gummy bears, colorful goldfish, etc.
So, I made a graph for you so that you can graph your colorful snack, whatever it may be, at home!

Colorful Snack Graph

All you will do is ask your child to take their serving of their snack and see if they can sort the colors into the right columns that line up above the color name. Then, when all the pieces are in place, you can ask your little one some of the following questions…. but some of them might be inappropriate for their level of understanding “number sense” – so dont push it:
– Which color of your snack did you have the most of? How many are there of that color?
– Which color of your snack did you have the least (or the smallest amount) of?
– Were there any colors that had the same/equal amount of that color snack?
– Which colors have more than 5? Less than 10?

The point is to teach your little one how to use and analyze a graph. This is a learning experience for YOU and your little one. You should feel proud of yourself for attempting this because you are introducing your little one to an activity that causes him/her to use higher order thinking skills to navigate his way around this visual data chart that he assembled….pretty advanced for such a young mind huh?