Ice Cream Graph Activity

If you are looking for exciting and impactful ways to have students practice with organizing data and graphing, look no more!

This is an Ice Cream Graph Activity for your students to take part in.  

It may be used best with 2nd – 5th grade math students.

In this data and graphing activity, students will collect data on their favorite ice cream flavors before organizing it into a graph. Here’s what the lesson might look like as an introduction to, or review of, graphing…

o Explain to the students that they will be choosing the flavor of ice cream they like the best out of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate chip.

o Give each student an ice cream cone and allow time for them to color it according to the flavor they’ve chosen. It must look like that flavor, or it won’t count as useful data!

o As students finish coloring their ice cream cones, have them tape their cones randomly to the board.

o When all ice cream cones have been taped to the board, ask the class some questions. The point is to show students that it’s very difficult to read this data because it isn’t organized. This is where graphing comes in very handy!

o You may either do this yourself or ask for student helpers but sort out the cones according to flavors on the board. Explain that the students will be making a pictograph on their own paper while you make one either on the floor or on a board all students can see.

o Together, create a graph for these ice cream flavors. Students will need to decide on a title and a key.

o When the graph is complete, discuss the kinds of answers someone can determine from this graph (e.g., 4 students like vanilla the best, more students like chocolate than chocolate chip, etc.) As a class, make a list of possible questions you could ask others to answer based on the data shown on your graph.

I hope you enjoy!

Here are links to similar resources in my store:

https://teachsimple.com/product/area-and-perimeter-mini-tasks

https://teachsimple.com/product/brain-burners-word-problems-packet

Here is a link to my store to enjoy other resources from me: https://teachsimple.com/contributor/at-the-core

I can be contacted for questions and concerns at sallyplant12@hotmail.com.

A 4 page printable PDF