Measurement

Measurement

Measurement involves a variety of different concepts including weight, length, height and volume. Children can begin to learn about simple measurement by using everyday objects. By experimenting with real objects, in their surroundings, children will begin to understand the different concepts of measurement. Through exploration and play children will develop their understanding of the length and height of an object, the weight of objects and the volume of different objects. Children will also be developing the language skills to share their findings with others.

Some ideas for developing skills relating to measure:

• Introduce the language of measurement to your child – talk about how long, tall, heavy, light or full/empty an object is. Can they put the members of their family in order from tallest to smallest? What is heavier an apple or 5 strawberries? Encourage your child to have a guess – can they think of a way to check if their answer was right?

• As you tidy up ask your child to arrange books or toys in order of size, width or height and clothes in order of length and size. Using this language, supports your child to learn comparative language and develop an awareness of size and measurement.

• Look at different types of clock together.  Talk about the numbers on a clock and that it allows us to measure time passing.  Point out the time on the clock, particularly at breakfast, dinner or bedtime.

• Use sand timers/stop watches to develop an awareness of time.  How many times can you hop to the back of the garden in 1 minute?  Display a 2 minute timer when brushing your child's teeth.  

• Look at the week/month/year ahead with your child on a calendar. Identify events that are relevant to your family - religious celebrations, birthdays or holidays for example.  Discuss days of the week, months and seasons.  What type of clothes do we wear in summer? Winter? Your birthday is in April - that is in spring and so on.

• Cooking and baking provide lots of opportunities for children to learn about measuring. Your child may enjoy holding a spoon and a cup as they watch you or join in counting and measuring ingredients. Children can use spoons, cups and scales to measure the ingredients.

• Use empty containers of different sizes, such as cups, jugs, spoons or bottles so that your child learns about pouring, filling, comparing and estimating. Use different sizes of containers to compare sizes. Encourage your child to guess which container holds more then try it out. Use a variety of different containers and substances (water, sand, rice) to increase your child’s understanding of volume.

• Put a height chart on the wall. Measure your child regularly and talk about how much they have grown, what size they used to be and what height they may reach.

• Introduce weight to your child by asking which object is lighter and which is heavier or are they about the same? Look at and discuss different types of scale together – a bathroom scale vs a kitchen scale for example.

• Use non-standard units of measure to estimate and check the length/height of different objects – for example, how many sticks long do you think our shed is? What would we use to measure our shed more accurately?

• Let your child role play and explore real measuring instruments – measuring tapes, rulers, scales, measuring jugs or stop watches for example. 

• Describe why accurate measurements are important – imagine a builder or a baker that couldn’t measure!

• Discuss starting measurements from 0.