Non-Standard Measurement Mayhem!

Phew! I am one tired teacher!  Our first week of Term 3 is almost over and my kidlets have worked super hard learning new concepts and practising skills.  In Maths we've been looking at non-standard measurement, and in our Maths Time (group rotations) we have revised length, looked at weight as a new concept, and explored capacity before we formally learn about it next week.  

Here's a photo round-up of what we did!

First was the review of length, after we had worked on it last term.

I took this activity idea directly from Kylie, The Down Under Teacher from her wonderful post earlier this week.  She has some amazing ideas!  This activity involved 'racing' a car down a ramp.  It looks like I created a starting line and lanes, but this is a handwriting chalkboard. :)  Once the cars have travelled down the ramp, the kidlets used paddlepop sticks, matchsticks and cubes to measure how far their car went.  We made sure that they practised laying their materials end to end.

I had put the balance scales out for Discovery Play late last term, but this week we really got stuck into thinking about the weight of different items.  We used the balance scales in our group work and learnt to use the words 'heavier' and 'lighter' to compare things from our every day lives.  We also completed a quick craft, an idea I borrowed from Casey over at Lifelong Learners in Prep.

A horse is heavier than me.

A house is heavier than me.

An elephant is heavier than me.

Finally, before we start working on the concept of capacity next week I gave the kidlets the chance to play in water with containers of various sizes to explore the idea of capacity in a really informal way.  Some of them even began testing out how many smaller containers of water it took to fill a larger container etc.  This was possibly the favourite activity of the week.  Luckily here in Queensland our Winter temperatures are warm enough for water play!

I hope you've had a great week so far!  I'm hanging out for a lazy Saturday morning catching up on my blog stalking... only one more day! :)

Lauren