Candy Graphing

I was spending some time looking at the Playful Learning website and loving it. So I found this idea there and decided to try it with the boys, since conversation hearts are in abundance right now in our household.

The coolest part was that the author of Playful Learning also included a printable empty chart that I could print out and use and not have to come up with one myself. Hooray for other people doing the work for me! :-) Anyway, the kids loved this activity and it gave us a chance to ask a lot of great comparison questions like, "Which line is the tallest?" "Which is the shortest?" "How much taller is the tallest line than the shortest line?" We also got to talk about which color was our favorite to eat. Both boys chose blue.

What I like about activities like this is that both kids can participate at the same time, even though their understandings are at different levels. I feel that the younger benefits from the kinds of questions and answers and ideas that the older comes up with, and the older benefits from the reinforcement that comes from listening to the more basic explanations I use when talking to the younger.  Good activity--very easy--and you get to eat all the candy at the end. A winner all around!