Measuring

[Guest]

Has anyone any brill ideas for measuring with non-standard measures? Thanks

[Susan]

hi Chris, dont know about brilliant but measuring with body parts is always a good one and you can compare the different sizes by drawing round and cutting out and ordering!

Dont forget some children take a long time to grasp the comparisons though, so some simple comparing of objects one against another to determine shorter etc can be a good starting point too!

[Guest]

As part of ourselves topic last half term we did hand and foot printing. When we come to non-standard measures I will laminate them and stick them to the wall as a non-standard height chart.

 

The children last year loved this!

 

We also used pencils and crayons to measure different objects around the classroom, the children would often then initiate this in their own play.

[Guest]

eating breadsticks and mesuring whose is longest shortest is a good fun way of introducing measurment!!

 

or if the chidlren have a piece od ribbon and use that to mesure objects around the classroom.

[Inge]

how about measuring volume? eg can 2 cups of water fit into one bigger one. how many cups to fill another etc. (we use colored rice gives a lovely sound and rainbow of colours while pouring.)

Our children always enjoy how many frogs can you jump over - drawings of frogs on the ground and they see how many they can jump, record it by sticking same number of smaller ones on a chart.and compare, (could be anything to jump over).

 

Inge

[bubblejack]

Inge I would like to try coloured rice. What do you use to colour it and how do you do it?

[Jackie A.]

I coloured rice last week for the children to make Rangoli patterns for Diwali. I added food colouring to water, then immersed the rice for a few minutes, then drained through a sieve. Then for speed I spread them on a baking sheet and dried them in a low oven for a short while. It was relatively easy to do and the children loved using the coloured rice.

[Inge]

to colour our rice we just put some rice in a bowl and add a few drops of food colour and an little water , just enough to allow it to be mixed with the rice, this gives a very insense colour to the rice, the more food colour the brighter the colour, we then spread it out onto baking sheets and dry in a low oven only takes about 5 miniutes.

 

Mix the colours to make purple and orange . less colour for different shdes of colour, we managed to make 10 different ones this time!!

 

we ask parents to each supply a bag of rice and colour it differnt colours and store this for use during the year.

 

we use it in the sandtray and the children love to find the rainbow in the tray whre we have put the colours in stripes, only lasts a few seconds but causes a lot of interest.

 

Over the year we use it for collage, measuring, touch, and try picking it up with chopsticks just a few of the ideas.

 

Inge