Well this week was spring break in the public school world. Since school only takes 2 hours in the morning, Monday through Friday, there was no spring break for my kiddo. It was a week of picture graph fun! However, she did have many playdates this week with her friends who go to public school. That is always so exciting for her.
When we first moved to this small town, it was summer. She made most of her friends at the park, and most of them go to public school. This was hard for her when school started back up. School vacations are the best, because she gets to see her friends who she normally doesn’t get to see that often.
With it being such a fun week, we made Math extra fun too! This week my daughter learned how to make and read a picture graph. As you know, we are using Schoolhouse Teachers curriculum, and we absolutely love it. I just wanted to share with you all of the different fun ideas they had for teaching about the picture graph.
Before we get started, I do want to let you know again that I am an affiliate for Schoolhouse Teachers. If you ever are interested in this curriculum or if you have any questions about it, please message me. I would love to tell you more about it! When you are done reading this post, if you are interested in this math curriculum, Stepping Up with Second Grade Math Lessons, you can find it at https://schoolhouseteachers.com/school-subjects/math/stepping-second-grade-math/ref/119608/.
Picture Graph Fun!
Schoolhouse Teachers made this week of understanding a picture graph so much fun! I don’t know if I have said this before, but this homeschool curriculum is an online curriculum that needs to be printed off. There are a number of different topics that your child can study. Plus, if you have more that one child, it is one price for your entire family! Printing off the picture graph assignments was very necessary to make learning this week fun and easy.
Fruit Game
One of the first things they had us do, was cut out and glue together a dice that has a different fruit on each side. Then we cut out all of the different pieces of fruit. The idea of the game is to roll the dice, and then place a fruit piece on the graph where it belongs. Whoever filled up an entire column first won the game. My daughter absolutely loved this game. We played it multiple times!
At the end of each game, I made sure to ask her a few questions about the different fruits to confirm that she does understand how to read a picture graph.
I would ask simple questions such as:
- Which fruit was the most favorite?
- Which fruit was the least favorite?
- Were there any fruits that were liked equally?
Favorite Classroom Fruit
This assignment obviously stuck with the fruit topic. It had a page of fruits that we cut into pieces that would be glued onto the picture graph page. For this particular project, they wanted her to put a classroom’s favorite fruits into a picture graph. Obviously, being a homeschooler, we don’t have a classroom full of kids to gain data from. This curriculum did provide data for her to use in the weekly slideshow.
She simply took that data, and then glued that amount of fruit onto each row. Then I asked her questions about the finished picture graph to make sure she was able to read it correctly.
Count Your Money
This idea was something that I came up with for my daughter. It was not part of the curriculum, but it went right along with the topic. My daughter has been wanting to count her money to see if she had enough money to purchase a room for her Gabby’s Dollhouse that we bought her for Christmas. Since we were planning on going to Target this week, I decided to have her create a picture graph with her money.
She organized all of her money by the different coins and bills. Then we counted each coin and bill separately, and then added each number all together. She was very excited to find out that she could purchase two rooms for her dollhouse. It was fun watching her get excited over this picture graph, when I told her what she could afford.
Friends and Family Voting Time!
Towards the beginning of the week, I had this idea to have my daughter come up with a question to ask my Facebook friends and family. Then we could take their answers and put them into a picture graph. Well, little did I know, the final assignment this week was exactly that. The question that she came up with was:
Which is your favorite creature, the unicorn, mermaid, dinosaur, or all three of them?
It was so much fun to see all of the comments start rolling in. I loved watching my friends and family have so much fun with this. There sure were a lot of responses too!
To make the picture graph, I wanted to make sure my daughter had some fun with it. Originally I wanted to use a poster board, but I didn’t have one at home. Instead, I just cut a section of construction paper off of the roll we had. Then I taped it onto our counter, drew a line towards the bottom, and wrote all of the creatures.
For the pictures, I drew the dinosaur and unicorn, and then traced a playdough cutter of a mermaid onto a piece of cardboard. Once I had them as simple as possible, I cut them out to use as stamps.
Next, I poured three different colors of paint onto a paper plate, and used a paint brush to spread the paint out enough to fit the creatures onto. I ended up rolling up tape to put on the top of each creature, so my daughter had something to hold onto when stamping them. It was messy, but she had fun, and it worked out pretty well!
It took a while to get this picture graph finished, but she did it! The final results came in with unicorn being the most popular. That is my daughter’s favorite, so she was pretty happy with that result.
Life As A Picture Graph
This week in children’s church, we have been talking about another section of the Sermon on the Mount. It is the part where Jesus talks about the parable of the log in your eye.
As we went through this week learning about the picture graph, it made me think about what it would be like if your life was being recorded on a picture graph. Can you imagine having every little bad thing, or good thing, or hard thing recorded? I know most of us can remember a good chunk of those times, but we don’t want to be judged by those moments in our life. Just like you shouldn’t judge someone else from a list of things that they have done.
A Log In Your Eye
The parable of the log in your eye is all about judging. It is about judging someone else about the small speck of sawdust in their eye, when you still have a log in your eye. Jesus wants us to look at ourselves and work on our own faults first, instead of pushing judgement and blame on others. If you have a fight with a friend, instead of blaming the other person, you should look at your own contribution to the fight. You also did something to make this fight happen.
Jesus does not judge, so why should we? He wants all of us and welcomes all of us. No matter what our picture graph of life looks like, He wants us to follow Him. As long as we can give our lives to Him, and ask for forgiveness of our sins, He has a special room for each of us in His home.
Pray for everyone around you, and work on your own heart. Make Jesus the center of your life, and try so very hard to stop judging others. I know that is incredibly difficult, because I have my own issues with that. This week and from now on, I pray that through God, I will be able to focus on my own heart, instead of worrying about and blaming others for their faults. I pray this for all of you as well.
Please enjoy this fun music video with motions of “Big House” by Audio Adrenaline at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBaY0-WznDQ. I shared this with the children’s church this week. They really enjoyed it, and I think it helped them understand that God’s home is so, so big, and that we are all welcome. Have a wonderful week friends!