Teaching about Odds and Evens with Monsters

One of my favorite teaching activities is creating even and odd monsters. After several other activities to teach my students about even and odd numbers, I invite my students to create their own even or odd monster. Here is how we did it.

Creating a Monster

The first thing I have my students do is choose whether they want to create an even monster or an odd monster. Once they have chosen which they prefer, they create their monsters. The only “rule” is that if you are making an even monsters it must have an even number of all body parts and if they choose to make an odd monster, the number of body parts must be odd. Here are some of the monsters created by my first graders:

Even Monsters

Odd Monsters

Beyond the Monsters

Once the monsters have been created and shared with the class, we created some graphs using our monsters. The first graph was a simple tally graph where students counted up the number of each body part and tallied it on the graph. This was a great check for the students to be sure that they had all even or odd numbers of body parts.

We then took our tally graphs and created bar graphs.

Our final step was to have students write some questions for their classmates which asked them to interpret the graphs. Students asked such questions as:

Which body part had the most?

Which body part had the least?

What is the difference between _____________ and ______________.

How many body parts in all?

This was not only a fun series of activities, but also a wonderful way to teach about even and odds, to review tally and bar graphs and to practice interpreting graphs.

Like this set of activities?

Click the image below to download the FREE templates!

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Other Even and Odd Activities from BMTM

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AFTER SCHOOL LINK UP

Love this idea from last week’s linky:

10 Crafts from Around the World from In the Playroom

The After School Link Up is a great place to share ideas and to find new ideas to do with your children after school or in your homeschool. The After School Link Up goes live every Monday. So, if you are a blogger, an educator or just some one looking for some good ideas, be sure to stop by Boy Mama Teacher Mama (or the other co-hosts) on Mondays and see what others have to share.

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