October/November = lots of falling leaves and lots of candy.  What better to do with both of those things?  Math, of course!  )

Whether you have extra M&M’s, Skittles, Smarties, Runts, or just a big bunch of assorted candy bars, take a few minutes to turn those sweets into more than cavities.  Even little bitty ones can sort candy, place the pieces on a blank grid, then color a bar graph.  As the kiddos get bigger, all the more fun they can have graphing their candy.  Here’s a post from last year about how we used M&M’s to do all sorts of graphs.  This year, we did some candy graphing, but not quite as in depth as last year.

And don’t forget all those autumn leaves!  Make a nature walk even more productive by collecting a sack of leaves to sort and graph.

Literal or concrete graphs are not only fun, but help younger ones understand better what a graph on paper represents.

After making the concrete graphs, my children jotted the information and used centimeter grid paper to design their own graphs.

Happy graphing!