Graphing with Preschoolers

I had introduced graphing with the boys last year when we got a pack of sea animals eraser back from the Underwater World field trip. They are excellent manipulatives for Math activities! Since then, we touched on it through books. Recently, we are learning Subtraction and the concept of "fewer than" stumped them. They could understand "more than" easily but I don't think they truly understood "fewer than" though they know they need to subtract.

Today, they came home telling me that they learnt graphing in school and were very excited about it as they recalled a book we read about Graphing.

Since I didn't prepare any materials and they couldn't wait, I took out the pack of sea animal erasers again. They remembered what they did before and proceeded to do up the graph on their own. I'm glad to see the great improvement in sorting and they were able to follow instructions to do up their own graph.

Y wanted to draw his own graph and he came up with this.

K got a little upset that the graph we did is not the same as what his teacher taught. He said I don't listen to his teacher... duh...  So I got him to show me what he did in school. He had his own idea of how he wanted to create his graph. He asked for a stencil to draw his sea animals.

Graphing is a simple basic Math concept to introduce to young children and can be a lot of fun.

Math with a pack of Erasers

The boys got these as a souvenir from their field trip. How cute! Turns out, they love love love these erasers and have been spending time "biting" people with their mini sharks. I thought I may as well make it a little more useful.

So, we did

Sorting and Counting

Counting

Sequencing

Graphing

Measuring

Estimating and more counting
I put some erasers into a clear jar and ask them to estimate. They will then pour the erasers out to count. I also tried to introduce the concept of "More than" or "Less than". This activity was inspired by Deborah from Teach Preschool.

Since I'm more of a language person, I see my kids doing very well with language but mediocre when it comes to Math. It's effortless for me to engage them in conversations, to make up stories but it takes a little more effort to introduce Math concepts. It just does not come naturally to me. I wish Math can remain this way all the way to adulthood. I'm so not looking forward to Primary school maths. My consolation, my husband took all the maths subjects available in school.