Creating charts and graphs is all about visual abstraction: the process of representing aspects of data with imagery that can be interpreted by the reader. Children may need help making the link between the "real" and the image. This abstraction can be achieved using symbols, size, colour and position. Where the representation is close to what they are representing, abstraction is relatively low. Abstraction is higher when the size or position of the symbols is used to represent quantities; for example, bars on a chart or points on a graph. These abstractions are not obvious to all children and need to be taught. Data can be represented using solid objects, paper and computer graphics. To help children develop the skills to understand such abstractions, teachers can challenge them to create and interpret representations in a diversity of ways. In this article, the author shares some ideas for doing such skill and shows how they all relate to the use of symbols, size, colour and position. (Contains 10 figures and 7 online resources.)