Who doesn't love a good bar graph!?

Halloween night was so much fun for us all. The kids had a blast dressed in their "Ocean Theme", as Penelope kept telling people. Cooper was a shark and Penelope a mermaid. Our neighborhood seems to come to life on Halloween and the kids have the most wonderful time. Actually, the grown ups do too! 

So much fun, in fact, that it was hard for all to fall asleep (well, everyone except Cooper, who fell asleep almost as soon as his pajamas were on). This seemed at the time to be perfect. The next morning we would be dealing with Fall Back Daylight Savings time, so going to bed a little later than usual could end up being our way of tricking the universe! UM...not so much. Cooper woke at his usual 6am, it was now 5am, and Penelope heard us head downstairs so she decided to join the party at 5:15am. How crazy, these days were so wonderful and magical before having kids! Now, ugh, you have to put your head down and charge through it! 

Since we were up nice and early (it was pitch black out, and raining, oh and we had to be quiet because my mother in law was in town sleeping)I had to think fast on the activities! 

We grabbed the candy bag and started to sort through the candies. I'm sure I could have pushed the limits and had Penelope organize the candy by type, but it was not the morning to push anyone, so we just stuck to organizing by color! 

I labeled the paper plates with color names and Penelope started to put the candy on the plate with the correct color name. Cooper tried to participate and amazingly, Penelope didn't get upset as he grabbed the candies and threw them around. 

Penelope then put the organized candies into their own bags. Once Nani was awake, we showed her the organized candy and used that candy to make a graph. I labeled a graph with numbers, made circles for Penelope to color in and labeled the bottom with colors. 

I didn't get to take any pictures of Penelope while she was coloring the graph, mainly because I was holding Cooper back from the markers! She opened each bag and we counted the candies as she colored the circles. 

Both the red and brown candies had more than the 13 circles I drew, but Penelope is only 3, so its really just about counting, and coloring. I have to point out though, her first coloring was the red circles and on her own after that color she started coloring the circles by making tighter color dots in the inside. And as you can see, by the time we got to brown, it was time to eat some candy and stop counting it! 

In First Grade we graphed things constantly. I do love a good bar graph or pictograph! This whole activity reminded me of a lesson I did to teach the class about voting. How perfect that Election Day is tomorrow! 

Click here for a fun voting and graphing lesson!