How to Graph Weather in Kindergarten

Kids will enjoy putting their rainy days on the graphs, even if they'd rather it was sunny.

Kindergarten students can benefit greatly from graphs. Although you might think that the concept of graphing is too complex for such young students, if you make the graph hands-on and relate it to their experiences, they can grasp how the concept works. You can use your daily circle time to introduce this method of graphing weather. Your students should be able to count to 10 and compare two lines of objects before taking part in this activity.

Things You'll Need

• Poster board
• Permanent marker
• Pictures of weather patterns (e.g., rain, snow, sun, cloud)
• Magnets with sticky backings

Instructions

1. Use the marker to create a grid on the poster board with four vertical columns and 11 horizontal rows. This will leave ten slots in each row for a picture, in addition to the label at the bottom of each row.

2. Label the bottom of each column with the name of one of the following weather patterns: rainy, cloudy, sunny, snowy.

3. Cut one magnet into small pieces and stick one piece on each square of the grid.

4. Cut one of the opposing magnets into pieces and put one piece on the back of each of the pictures.

5. Instruct a student to look out the window each day and tell the class what the weather is like. The student should then place the correct picture on the graph in the correct location. For example, if it is raining outside, the child would choose the picture of rain and place it at the bottommost available slot in the rain column. This will create a variation of a bar graph, in which the number of pictures in each row represent the number of days that have had that type of weather.

Tips & Warnings

• Use the graph to talk about what type of weather you have the most of and the least of. (These are both important concepts for kindergarten students to know.)

• For advanced practice, ask students questions such as "How many more rainy days have we had this year than snowy days?" or "How many more days of sun will we have to have until our sunny day column is equal to the cloudy day column?"

References

• "Utah Education Network"; Just Graph It!; June 2007