Counting Trail Mix Cups

What you need

• Clear cups, 1 snack cup per child
• Paper, 1 sheet per child
• Crayons or markers, a few colors
• Cereal, at least 10 pieces per child
• Raisins, 5 per child
• Pretzels, 3 per child
• Bowl, 3

How to do it

Grown-up prep: Check everyone for food allergies first, especially nuts, and read the cereal and pretzel labels. Leave whole nuts out for young children because they are a choking risk. Raisins and other small pieces can also be a choking risk for little ones, so keep kids seated and supervised while they eat. Put each ingredient in its own bowl. On a sheet of paper, draw three tall columns side by side, label them cereal, raisins and pretzels, and draw a row of 10 boxes up each column.

1. Wash your hands and sit down with your empty snack cup.
2. Count out 10 cereal pieces, touching each one. Drop them in your cup.
3. Count out 5 raisins the same way and add them to your cup.
4. Count out 3 pretzels and add them too.
5. Draw three tall columns on your paper, each with 10 little boxes.
   Ask: Which snack will go in each column?
6. Color one box in the cereal column for each cereal piece, so 10 boxes.
7. Color 5 boxes in the raisin column and 3 boxes in the pretzel column.
8. Look at your bar chart and compare the bars.
   Ask: How many more cereal pieces than pretzels do you have? Can you count the extra boxes to check?
9. Shake your trail mix, then eat it sitting down, one piece at a time.
10. Show a friend your chart, or make a new mix! What will you count next?
    Ask: What new snack amounts would you pick for the next cup?

Play it again

• Dice mix: roll a die for each snack and count out that many pieces.
• Ollie's order: a grown-up calls out three numbers and you build the cup to match.
• Guess the graph: draw a bar chart first, then fill a cup to match it.