bar graphs

Bar graphs are a useful tool for visualizing discretely measurable data. H & F love to sort objects by color, size, type, etc. and we started making bar graphs a few months ago because I thought they would be a fun teaching tool.

What you need:

• paper
• crayons, markers, or pencils
• objects to sort

We made a bar graph for trains this time. F routinely sorts them by color, so I thought it would be fun to see what our train collection looked like in graph form. I drew the axes and labeled them (the child can also do this part), H & F sorted the trains, counted them up, and H colored in the squares on graph paper corresponding to the number of trains we have.

Bar graph of our toy trains

1. Set up your graph with labeled axes

2. Sort your objects.

F did most of the sorting.

We decided to include tenders as well.

3. Fill in the graph (H used colored pencils).

This is an activity they really enjoy and I hope you do too! You can ask your child which color has the least, most, which have the same number, etc. If you are looking for another math tool you can ask how many more of X colored trains would you need to have the same number as Y colored trains, and so on.