A glyph is a special way to collect and analyze data about a subject. It is a simple picture showing several variables at once.
Here are some ideas for apple glyphs for elementary school. Glyphs are helpful to get to know your students, and to help children collect, use and display data.
Apple Glyphs For Elementary School
What you need to create an apple glyph
Just-Right Glyphs for Young Learners: 15 Fun Activities That Teach Children How to Collect, Display, and Use Data—and Build Essential Math Skills All Year Long
- paper
- colored markers or crayons
Steps to creating an apple glyph
- Give your child a piece of paper. Tell him or her that you are going to describe a series of options. They should follow directions by listening carefully to each set of choices. Picking the options that are true for them, they’ll add features to their glyph accordingly.
- Ask your child to draw an outline of the body of an apple. If your child prefers to eat corn products (corn muffins, corn on the cob), have him or her color the apple yellow. If he/she prefers to eat wheat products (wheat bread or wheat pasta), have him/her color the apple green.
- Instruct your child to draw and color in a stem for the apple. If your child prefers to eat nuts, have him or her color the stem black. Would they rather eat seeds from sunflowers and pumpkins? Then they should color the stem brown.
- If your child prefers to eat pecan pie for dessert, they should draw and color one green leaf on the stem. If they prefer to eat apple pie for dessert, they should draw/color two green leaves on the stem. Does your child prefer to eat pumpkin pie for dessert? Have him or her draw in and color three green leaves on the stem. If your child prefers a different kind of pie or autumn dessert, have him or her leave the stem bare.
- Help your child make a key for his or her glyph that explains its contents.
Of course, these are just one idea. You could come up with a lot of other questions for variety.
Related fun activity: Decomposing Pumpkin
What you can talk about after creating apple glyphs with your children:
- Make a glyph for yourself and then help your child gather information from friends and family members to create several more harvest product glyphs. Discuss how you can take the information from several glyphs and graph the information using visual aids such as different graphs and charts.
- As an extension activity, help your child graph the first set of information (wheat vs. pasta) as a tally chart, the second set (nuts vs. seeds) as a bar graph, and the third set (pies) as a pie chart.
Apple Glyph Templates
Sometimes younger children have trouble drawing specific shapes, so it’s best to have a template they can use. Here’s a simple one you can print and cut out for your little ones.
Learn More About Glyphs From These Books
Great Glyphs Around the Year: 15 Month-by-Month Activities That Motivate Kids to Collect, Display, and Use Data—and Have Fun Learning Math!Great Glyphs: All About Me: 12 Skill-Building Activities That Motivate Kids to Collect, Display, and Use Data—and Connect to the NCTM StandardsGreat Glyphs: Neighborhood & Community: 12 Skill-Building Activities That Motivate Kids to Collect, Display, and Use Data—and Connect to the NCTM Standards