Measurement Fun!

This is such an easy activity, I sometimes forget to get the stuff out! Joy and I have been measuring lots of things lately, including her kitten and the trees in the National Geographic insert (which are huge, btw!). I want Joy to explore all kinds of measurement, so we began weighing things and exploring volume.

Most of measurement is fun, but finding volume or capacity is the best! We gathered some measuring cups and spoons, a funnel, and some random containers. I put some water into a small plastic tub and we played on the table, since it's too cold to play with the water outside.

At first, I just let Joy explore pouring, overflowing, splashing, funneling, and other fun stuff. Then I started asking her guiding questions. Here are a few of them:

1. Which one holds more water?
2. Can all of that water fit in here?
3. How would you get water into this skinny container?
4. How many teaspoons of water can fit in here?
5. Does this container hold a whole cup of water?
6. How can you find out how much water this container holds?

Some of her explorations were quite careful, and some were quite impulsive. I wasn't out to have Joy know how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon! My purpose was for her to explore the volumes of known- and unknown-capacity containers. In other words, I just wanted her to know that we can measure the capacity of a container, and that we might use teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, etc. to do so.

Using the funnel turned out to be quite a bit of fun! Joy hadn't used one for a while and didn't remember what they do. She was quite intrigued by the tall skinny purple container and wanted to put water into it. She tried pouring water into it, but was frustrated. I suggested that she use the funnel, and after some fumbling, she came up with the method shown on the right. Then she used the funnel for every container!

We left the materials on the table for several days so Joy could play, and she did. These experiences are crucial to developing vocabulary and understanding of not just measurement, but of our world!

Tracking Trapezoids

Joy and I have been looking for shapes a lot lately. It all started with a Montessori Geometry App for the iPad. It's by Les Trois Elles and available in the iTunes App Store. It's a great app with activities for kids from 2-10! I've even learned some things. The younger children can put shapes into puzzle forms; the older students work with patterns, determining how one shape is different from three others, etc. Joy likes the app, and so do I!

We started paying attention to shapes around our home, like these bricks. We named them rectangles first... then quadrilaterals... then parallelograms. Joy was learning a lot from playing with her app!







We started finding parallel lines everywhere. I would point them out at first, then Joy started finding them. We found them on our craft table and our floor. We found them on sidewalks and between bricks. And of course, we had lots of fun seeing them everywhere!

Joy learned that squares tipped on their sides are what she calls diamonds. That squares and her diamonds are both rhombuses. That squares are always rectangles, but diamonds are sometimes kites, not rectangles.

And we both learned that it's EASY to find rectangles in the real world. Triangles are pretty easy, too. Squares and diamonds are plentiful. But those trapezoids...

We searched high and low for trapezoids! Joy was looking for isoceles trapezoids and right-angled trapezoids. I was watching pretty much everywhere we went for trapezoids. We talked about trapezoids, and why they wouldn't be used very often for architecture (which is where we found many of the other shapes). But we couldn't find trapezoids.

Until we found THIS building! Joy was bouncing and twirling when she found these trapezoids! It has rectangles, squares, parallelograms, and many other shapes, but the trapezoids were special. She insisted I take pictures of the trapezoids...

And when we went inside the building, we found MORE trapezoids in the stonework! To the left, you can see Joy pointing to two right-angled trapezoids, fit together to make a rectangle. We spent lots of time examining the shapes in the stonework; the trapezoids were worth it!





So is the learning. We continue our quest to find shapes in our world.