M&Ms and Graphing

[mom31257]

I was wondering if anyone could give me any other ideas for my class. I'm teaching a math games/activities class at our co-op and wanted to do some things with M&Ms since it's our last day.

 

I was thinking of having the kids open their bags and sort/count each color and do the following:

 

individual bar graphs of number of each color

Total the numbers in the room and make a pie graph together

Pick one color and collect the data from each person to teach mean, median, and mode

Use that same data to do a line plot

 

Anything else that would work and be fun?

[Miss Tick]

I don't know what you covered in your class so I hope these aren't too far off base...

 

What about measuring using M&Ms as non-standard units? For younger students you could actually line them up, for olders you could measure and then calculate how many would be needed to ____.

 

You could do something similar with volume and estimating. Tall thin container vs. short wide container could be fun.

 

Patterns is another activity they call out for. Set up patterns and figure out what comes next.

 

I don't know how the nutrition information is listed, but you could calculate the number of calories in a handful, a cup, a bag. (This might be a bit of downer for any adults waiting to help "clean up")

 

If you have a scale you could obviously do mass comparisons.

 

I suddenly have the urge to go scour my hidey-holes for forgotten chocolate. Hope you all have fun!

[Farrar]

I like the estimations idea! Get the book Great Estimations (it's really cool) and then have the kids estimate the number of M&M's.