How can I teach my preschool measuring?
Yesterday I told Little Bear that we were going to do preschool measuring with blocks. I had planned to do it in the afternoon, but Little Bear surprised me and was so excited that he wanted to do it right away. Little Bear has been really fascinated with preschool measuring so I should have seen that coming and the actual activity turned out to be a lot of fun for Little Bear.
Since Little Bear is only in preschool, I wanted our first preschool measuring lesson to be as simple as possible. Of course, the easiest way to do this was to use a fun object (we used blocks) to measure rather than a conventional measuring tool (like a ruler, or tape measure). This turned out to be a perfect first preschool measuring activity.
I made this fun math worksheet for preschool measuring called Measuring with Blocks (super original, I know). First, I had Little Bear trace one block in the box at the top. I explained to him that we needed to trace the block so we would have a frame of reference for our big the objects were. Of course I didn’t use the phrase “frame of reference” when I explained it to him, but you get the idea. ;)
Next, I had Little Bear pick out several objects that he wanted to measure. I wrote the names of these objects on the chart in the “What did you measure?” column. I showed Little Bear how to measure the first object just so he would get an idea of how to do it. We lined up the blocks next to the object, then we counted how many blocks it took. Little Bear wrote the number of blocks in the “How many blocks?” column.
After the first object, Little Bear understood the concept and he measured away. I honestly didn’t think preschool measuring could be so much fun. Maybe it’s a boy thing, but Little Bear LOVED this activity. He filled up the whole math worksheet within just a few minutes and kept on measuring (without writing it down) the rest of the day. This activity was great because it taught Little Bear the concept of measuring without having to use something abstract like a ruler. I think I may repeat this activity in a few days with another size of block so that I can introduce the concept of measurement standards and why they are important.
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Great activity – simple but practical. :)