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{Graphing for Preschoolers - Animal Vitamins}


About a week after Princess Pea got new animal-shaped vitamins, we started to notice that every day she seemed to end up with an elephant.

It's our morning game: We take out a vitamin and hide it in our hand, while Princess Pea tries to guess which animal it is. There are 14 different animals pictured on the bottle, which she uses as her guide to help her guess.

But for some reason, we just kept getting elephants.

This led to a hypothesis that perhaps there were actually only elephants in the bottle, and the other pictures were 'just for decoration'.

So we decided to make a chart to keep track of which shape she gets each day. I quickly drew up a rough graph over breakfast; I sketched the animals and Princess Pea helped to identify which letter I would need to write as the first letter of each animal's name. Princess Pea has been enthusiastically recording her vitamin shape each day.




So far we've learned that:

There are not only elephants in the bottle.
Of the 14 different animals pictured, she's only gotten 3 different kinds: elephants, monkeys, and tigers.
Since we started graphing, she's gotten 4 monkeys, 3 elephants, and 2 tigers.
Since we started graphing, the shape she's gotten the most has been monkeys.
Of the three types she's had, she shape she's gotten the least has been tigers.
There are 11 animal shapes that she hasn't gotten yet at all.

She's also learned about graphing, predictions, probability, statistics, letter-sound relationships, what gazelles are, and how to write the letter X :-)

Will keep you posted as to our further findings, because I know you're all now on tenterhooks!



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Linking to: Living Life Intentionally, It's Playtime, Sunday Showcase, I Can Teach My Child, Sun Scholars