Graphing Crocs

alright...it's not very often that i am creative with home school...i am a fairly decent teacher, but i am so left-brained that i like to check off the list or do whatever the book tells me to do, so when i come up with a creative idea, i feel really good about myself. but don't get the impression that i am super creative based on this blog entry, because i am not. but i was so excited that we had all these crocs to give away...so i wanted to incorporate my kids in giving these out. crocs are so fun because they are so colorful. so i thought how fun would it be to sort and organize them into colorful piles. after we did that, i realized we could count and graph them. then i realized that it probably wouldn't kill me to deviate from the "schedule" for math this week and take time to do this as our math. perfect: hands on math + a good purpose = LEARNING for life!
first we sorted them all into piles...we made two even piles, because we were making two separate boxes of crocs for 2 teams to take with them on village visits this weekend.
then we counted them...
then we used graph paper to make graphs based on quantity, color and size.
toby even joined in on the fun...the great thing is that we just happened to be on a graphing unit in our math curriculum. that makes me not feel so bad for going against the "rules."
on one side we wrote numbers on the bottom we wrote the sizes and then we used the appropriate color crayon to color the correct amount of shoes for each size
here is the finished product. one box ended up with 26 and then other 27.
then we piled them up into each box...ready to be taken to the village
jesse however was really enamored with the red fur-lined crocs and kept trying to sneak them back out. but in the end he put them back
annie was really pleased by all her work and couldn't wait to present her "data" to the team the next day before the village visit.