Teaching Measurement - Part 1
Teaching Tips...
When teaching measurement to young children provide lots of opportunities for the students to order objects by size.
Everyday activities and experimenting with real objects help children understand measurement concepts.
The terms non-standard and standard are often used when describing prescribed learning outcomes for measurement.
Measuring with non-standard units means measuring things with blocks, pencils, hands, feet, etc. As long as the items used to measure with are all the same size, e.g. identical blocks or brand new pencils, they are suitable to use.
Measuring with standard units means measuring with inches, feet, yards, centimeters or meters, using rulers and other measuring devices.
For a detailed how to teach a measurement activity, see the example half way down on "Teaching kindergarten and preschool math" page.
Teaching measurement - Area
A fun activity is to find two flat objects which look the same but are different sizes.
Cover them with unifix cubes and count how many blocks it takes to cover each one.
In this example, I found an enormous leaf about 7 inches long on a walk. I searched for a similar leaf that was very small but the same shape.
The children sat around the leaves and took turns placing unifix cubes on top of the leaves and counting them as a group. They then recorded their observations.
Teaching Measurement - Volume
A water center is useful for allowing children to have many experiences with measuring volume. Build children's vocabulary as they experiment with pouring water into taller, shorter, narrower, and wider containers.
Example: "Did the narrow, tall container hold the same amount of water as the wide, short one?"
Teaching measurement Part 2 - Find info about:
Time
Temperature
Recording measurement experiences
Measurement vocabulary
Skills to teach
