A young girl and boy holding apples.

Make a Fruit Graph

Playing graphing games using stickers from your favorite fresh fruits is a fun activity that gets the whole family involved.

Materials

  • 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper
  • Labels from the skins of fruits
  • Grocery store flyers
  • Marker
  • Glue stick or paste

Don’t throw away those sticky labels on fresh fruits — use them to make a graph!

Directions

  1. At the top of an 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper write, “The Fruits We Eat.”
  2. Now invite your child to cut out pictures of fruits from grocery flyers. The pictures should be small enough to paste side-by-side across the bottom of the paper.
  3. Use the marker to make a straight line down the left side of the paper and another line across the bottom.
  4. Paste the pictures beneath the bottom line and write the numbers 1-10 up the vertical line.
  5. Post the empty graph where your child can reach it. Each time anyone eats a fruit, ask them to put the sticker on the graph in the appropriate column. If the fruit doesn’t have a sticker, make a mark in the column instead.
  6. As you get more and more stickers, talk about the graph with your child. Ask, “What story does our graph tell about the fruits we eat?” For example, "It tells us we ate more apples than bananas."

Parent Tips:

  • This activity gives your child experience collecting and displaying data.
  • Find other things that your child is interested in graphing (for example the daily weather) and help set up a graph for recording the information.

Iowa PBS STEAM Activities and Crafts provided by PBS KIDS Parents.