Stuck on my 5 yr old ds's homework!

[macwoozy]

What is a tally chart? I've got to help him create a tally chart to show the number of different lights in the house. I've never heard of it, I can't remember ever doing them at school. I'm guessing its just a normal graph, does anyone know? I feel a right dimwit, because I'm sure I got his homework wrong the other week and he's only 5

IIII WITH A / THROUGH IT

so it counts in 5

Tally chart is just where you put sticks in groups of 5 as you count. So for five you'd have IIII with another line through the 4 from bottom left hand corner to top right hand corner. So you might have

Lamps III
Wall lights II
Ceiling lights IIIIIIIII

But with the sticks through which I can't do on here.

you do a little short line for each one you count. You can cross through 4 with the 5th line if you want.

Do a box for each room and the tally within each box.

Tally charts are vertical lines grouped in groups of 5. 4 vertical lines with the 5th on scoring through them. Does this help?

Do they want lights per room or types of lights as I did? Make sure you get that bit right!

Tally chart, right the names of the different types of light, then put a mark by the name for each type of light you see e.g.

Table Light IIII
Floor Lamp III
Halogen III

After every 4 marks you do the fifth as a diagonal through all 4 marks and then start a new group for the sixth one you see.

hope this is not too confusing

What I'd refer to as a tally chart would be a list of the rooms in your house, and lines for each light within the room, so say a bedroom with three lights would be lll. If you have a room with more than 5 lights then you would usually have the fifth line scoring through the four vertical lines. Does that ring a bell with him?

We have tons of little lights embedded in the ceiling, so I'm glad that it is not our homework!

Make sure you space out the groups of five to make it easier to count up.

This thread is making me PMSL!!!

For the chart, have two columns. One for the room names and a wider one for the tallies.

Have enough rows for the amount of rooms plus the title bar.

How come everyone else knows that but me? Now I feel dead silly. I'm sure I paid attention once in a while at school. Thanks, at least I can do his homework with pride this week.

macwoozy - I didn't know what it was either. How will we manage with homework for 10 year olds if we're struggling with 5 year olds? Flaming homework at 5 anyway - pah!

but why does it matter? is it counting homework? or Green Energy Efficiency homework? are they doing a project on low energy lightbulbs?

my 5yo has none of this. just reading books.

Fennel its maths! How to represent data in different forms.

They do taly charts, bar charts, scatter charts - basically all the simple types of charting. It is good as it helps with arithmetic too!

They will also probably do problems using data in chart form - so how many more apples does James have than Ewan has, etc.

Advanced stuff - I was rather surprised I have to say!

I am 42, intelligent and educated. And I've never heard of a bloody tally chart. Oh, I am so looking forward to homework. Sigh.

I I I I/
I I I/I
I I/I I
I/I I I

I am oddly satisfied by doing that

PMSL!!!

Tally charts must be a National Curriculum thing.

Idea has been swallowed by ds, & we now have tally charts for - how many goes he had to get before he scored a basketball goal, how many pairs of socks he's got, how many chews dd managed on her cereal. Bits of paper ALL over the house with straggling captions in blunt capitals, like a lost archive of medieval sheep records.

Aloha - I am convinced that they were called something else when I was young. I do remember doing the tally marks, but I am sure they were not called tally charts!

It would lend some credence to my contention if I could remember what we did call them - however I cannot for the life of me remember!

Isn't what you scratch on your cell wall when you're doing time?

soapbox, I hope ds doesn't get scatter charts next week, I'm going to have to start a new thread