We did a St. Patrick's Day graphing activity yesterday at APG. This is the second time I do graphing with the kids and they are more familiar with the concept now.
I found a free St. Patrick's Day printable pack and this graph was included. There is a paper dice that you can make but instead I cut out the small pictures and paste it on my foam dice. I have a set of three die so two of them have pictures and one has colors. (I cut out the squares for the die from the "what comes next" pattern page. They fit my die nicely.)
So I use my own rules and play this graphing game with the kids.
Each kids get to roll three die at once. He/She will use the dot marker in the color shown on the dice to mark on the graph. If one picture dice show rainbow and another show gold coins, there will be one dot for rainbow and gold coins.
The game stops when a picture graph reaches 5 counts.
Before the first turn is made, I asked each child to make a guess which picture will reach 5 counts first and have their initials made at the bottom. This kind of got them to start "rooting" for their picture.
I was afraid that a particular picture will keep appearing on the die and make the game end so fast. But the die I have seem to be fair. We went two rounds and still have not ended the game. But three pictures had 4 counts already so I asked if the kids want to change their guess. And they all shifted their guess towards the shamrock. Mom T rooted for the "black horse" and I picked a different "4-counter". And I got the right guess!
We discussed about the graph at the end, regarding which picture scored the most, which is the least, were there ties. It was fun math in progress.