Graphing Lesson Plans for Preschoolers
When you’re working with little kids, you may not know what to include in graphing lesson plans for preschoolers. When you think about math for preschoolers, you might just think of counting and identifying numbers. But preschool math includes much more!
Young children can learn about comparing and sorting through fun math activities. You can even teach preschool age kids about understanding basic data through graphing. Read on to find out which aspects of graphing are developmentally appropriate to include in preschool graphing lesson plans.
Whether you are a preschool teacher or a homeschooling parent, you might feel like you don’t know how to teach graphing to little kids. It may have been a long time since you did any graphing in your own math classes. Don’t worry! You don’t need to do any quadratic equations or fancy pie charts with four year olds.
Making graphs with preschoolers is just about helping them to organize information. Young children love to sort and categorize – graphing is the natural next step.
These Stay At Home Educator graphing lesson plans for preschoolers include both hands-on graphing activities and graphing printables. Kids both make graphs with physical objects and learn how to read and create graphs on paper.
This graphing preschool unit is just one of nine included in the Daily Lessons in Preschool Mathematics Curriculum.
Graphing Hands-On Supplies
This curriculum is designed to be low-prep and utilize the same supplies during each math unit. Buy it once, and use them over and over again for different learning purposes! Take a look at some of the resources we use for each unit and click each picture for more details. These items are staples for any early childhood math curriculum.
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- PRACTICE COUNTING, SORTING & MORE: Develop early math skills, counting, sorting, and color…
- HANDS-ON TACTICAL LEARNING: These teddy bear counters are great for hands-on tactical learners.
- 102 BEAR COUNTERS WITH ACTIVITY GUIDE & STORAGE: Set includes 102 bear counters in 6 vivid colors,…
- COUNTING TOYS: Teach children to count to 100 by ones and tens while building fine motor and math…
- MATH LINK CUBES: 10 different kid-friendly colors, these cubes are terrific for grouping by color…
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- 5 Bright Colors: Outfit up to 4 players with red, yellow green, and blue spinners
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All About Graphing Lesson Plans for Preschoolers
Our preschool graphing lesson plans are part of a whole preschool math curriculum – Daily Lessons in Preschool Mathematics – that includes instruction in all five math disciplines.
Graphing is part of data analysis, which is actually a key component for early math. The lesson plans for graphing focus on helping preschoolers (or kindergarteners) to understand and to be able to create physical object graphs, pictographs, and bar graphs (both horizontal and vertical bar graphs).
Discovery Activities: Math Picture Cards
Each week of the preschool graphing lesson plans includes math photo cards. These photo discovery activities help your kids to visually see the math in the world around them. The photos are a great way to introduce your preschoolers to the math topic you’ll be teaching them about for the next week. The lesson plans include discussion questions to help you talk about the math in the pictures.
Daily Dip: Math Review Activities
Each day’s lesson plan has a review activity built in – the Daily Dip. For the graphing lesson plans, the Daily Dip activities review counting, number sense, and basic addition/subtraction.
These are quick fun ways to help your kids keep practicing their math skills. When you get the entire preschool math curriculum, the lesson plans spiral through the different math areas. So each week’s Daily Dip reviews the concepts that the children learned the week before.
Teach and Engage: Graphing Lesson Plans for Preschoolers
The Teach and Engage sections of the daily preschool lesson plans are the hands-on activities to teach graphing to preschoolers. Each day and each week builds upon the previous activities for a systematic approach that gives both you and your children confidence. These math activities are fun for kids, and easy for you to implement in small groups.
These graphing lesson plans include clear instructions on what to do with the children as well as sample language for you to use when explaining the concepts. The graphing activities for preschoolers include making physical graphs out of math manipulatives and objects around your house/classroom.
The plans also incorporate reading and creating both horizontal and vertical bar graphs on paper.
Printable Graphing Centers for Preschoolers
The printable math centers for the Daily Lessons in Preschool Mathematics Graphing Unit are fun ways for your little kids to continue practicing with graphs. Each week’s lesson plan includes two different types of centers, often with multiple versions of the centers.
These preschool graphing centers are meant for independent but supervised work, after the children have learned how to read and make graphs through the hands-on activities in the daily lesson plans. They are not just themed graphing activities, but an integral part of the curriculum.
Race to the Top Graphing Games
The first printable graphing centers are race to the top style games where the children roll a die with fun pictures on it. Then they add a counter on the printed graph based on what they rolled. As they continue to roll the die, they create a vertical bar graph to show how many of each picture they rolled.
It’s in the Bag Graphing Printable
In this preschool graphing activity, the children create a physical graph. They sort math manipulatives by color, and then line them up on the printable to make a physical object graph. Once the preschoolers have created their bar graph, they can use the graph to answer questions comparing how many of each color.
Gum Ball Color Graphing Activities
For this printable graphing activity, the preschool kids practice organizing data that is already shown (the colored gum balls mixed up in the gum ball machine). The activity helps the kids to see how it’s easier to tell which color has more or less when the data is organized on the graph. This center also helps children practice their counting and basic addition.
Reading Pictographs Task Cards to Practice Graphing
The pictograph centers use fun pictures of objects like bugs, snowmen, popsicles, etc. Children learn to read pictographs and practice their counting. These centers include two levels for differentiation.
Copy the Data – Copy the Graph
In these graphing centers for preschool, the children use math manipulatives or counters to graph the jumbled data on the page. This activity again helps to show how it’s easier to compare numbers of objects when the information is in a bar graph. This center also has two levels for differentiation.
Transfer the Data in a Graph
These Transfer the Data centers are similar to the Copy the Data centers, but are a bit harder. Rather than counting the colored bears or animals, the children need to read a tally chart to understand how many to graph for each color. The tally marks are more abstract than the pictures, and preschoolers may need more help with this center.
Spin & Graph Mats
In the Spin and Graph Mats center, children practice creating horizontal bar graphs. Preschoolers love spinning to pick the color, and then they keep track of how many of each color they’ve got using the horizontal bar graph.
Pour & Count Graphing Mats
The Pour and Count Graphing Mats center provides another opportunity for the little kids to make horizontal bar graphs. Children pour counters out onto the rainbow colors, and then graph how many counters fell on each color.
Math to Literacy Connections
In addition to the daily lesson plans and all of the math centers, the graphing lesson plans for preschoolers include eight optional literacy activities using math picture books. Math books are a great way to extend your children’s math learning and incorporate literacy concepts at the same time.
All of our math lesson plans have picture book recommendations – two for each week – and corresponding math/literacy activities to go along with each book. Children can have fun acting out what they read about in the math picture books.
- Which Would You Rather Be? by William Steig
- Let’s Make a Picture Graph by Robin Nelson
- Making Graphs by Bridget Heos
- We Can Graph It by Ann Murphy
- Talley O’ Malley by Stuart J. Murphy
- Tally Cat Keeps Track by Trudy Harris
- The Great Graph Contest by Loreen Leedy
- The Best Vacation Ever by Stuart J. Murphy
- Steig, William (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 02/15/2005 (Publication Date) – HarperCollins (Publisher)
- Nelson, Robin (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 24 Pages – 08/01/2012 (Publication Date) – LernerClassroom (Publisher)
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Heos, Bridget (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- Ann Murphy (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 14 Pages – 09/19/2024 (Publication Date)
- This award-winning series by Stuart J. Murphy teaches math through stories and visual models|63…
- Murphy, Stuart J. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- Harris, Trudy (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 08/01/2022 (Publication Date) – Millbrook Press ™ (Publisher)
- Leedy, Loreen (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 09/01/2006 (Publication Date) – Holiday House (Publisher)
- Murphy, Stuart J. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 40 Pages – 02/01/1997 (Publication Date) – HarperCollins (Publisher)
Get Your Graphing Lesson Plans for Preschoolers Here
So now you know that preschoolers really can do graphing. Your children can learn how to make physical object graphs, how to understand pictographs, and how to read and create bar graphs – both horizontal and vertical. And all of these graphing centers and lesson plans are already done for you in the Daily Lessons in Graphing Preschool Math Unit.
Do you need more than just graphing? Are you looking for a complete preschool math curriculum? The Daily Lessons in Preschool Mathematics bundle includes these graphing lesson plans for preschoolers as well as lesson plans for counting up to 20, comparing & sorting, shapes, positions & patterns, measurement, and basic addition & subtraction.
The curriculum is a systematic, spiraling approach that covers all areas of preschool math through fun, hands-on activities and colorful math printable centers. These preschool math lesson plans make it easy for you to spend less time prepping and more time doing what you want to do. While you are also sure that your children are getting a solid foundation for their math futures.
Math Lesson Plans for Preschoolers
Creating a comprehensive math lesson plan for preschoolers requires careful consideration and planning. A full math curriculum should encompass all five disciplines in mathematics: number sense, operations, geometry, measurement, and data analysis.
It’s crucial to introduce children to these concepts in a fun and engaging manner. It’s also crucial to teach preschool math systematically. Here are more posts about math lesson plans for preschoolers and how to teach preschool math.
- Shape Preschool Lesson Plans
- Counting 0-5 Preschool Lesson Plans
- Comparing & Sorting Preschool Lesson Plans
- Counting 0-10 Preschool Lesson Plans
- Positions & Patterns Preschool Lesson Plans
- Counting 0-20 Preschool Lesson Plans
- Measurement Preschool Lesson Plans
- Graphing Preschool Lesson Plans (you are here)
- Addition & Subtraction Preschool Lesson Plans
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Product on sale*** Daily Lessons in Preschool Mathematics CurriculumOriginal price was: $135.00.$99.00Current price is: $99.00.
I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.