Any ideas for measuring and weighing crafts and activities for children under five in a pre school setting?

Question

Any ideas for measuring and weighing crafts and activities for children under five in a pre school setting?

Answer 1

First thing to teach is what is  "measure"  One way is to compare their height to each other.  Teach the terms, Large, small, big, little, tall, short. Let them use bowls and containers and dip sand or water, maybe see how many butter bowls it takes to fill a quart container with water or sand.  These things come before real measuring and weighing.  For "weighing" the same thing goes.  They must first understand the term, maybe they can hold something in each hand and feel the weight of them or maybe hold a feather in one hand and a paperweight in the other and feel the difference.  Use things that are in their world--like a seesaw as a balance scale.  Real measuring and weighing is for Kindergarten and first grade.

Answer 2

Try using wet and dry sand, water, maths equipment and any form of scales or just try using their imagination. The older ones could draw up a graph and judge which favourite items where heavier and which were lighter.

Try using small items tied to balloons light parachutes and get the children to decide which ones will land first because their were heavier etc etc..

Good luck and most importantly HAVE FUN!

Flower xx

Answer 3

why don't you make something...either a snack (if you can't bake it you can always do a trail mix or non-bake deserts) or a craft like play-doh  or something.  It is fun to do and fun afterwards

Answer 4

It's best to do these things in the context of a real life activity, so it's meaningful to the child.  If you have a craft that the kids like and requires certain weights of beads, say, the children will want to weigh things.  All kids love measuring cup and spoon work when they're baking something yummy.  

And, Ask the kids what they want to measure and weigh.  They'll probably have lots of ideas.

"real measuring" is not for K or 1st.  See how this illustrates how bizzare the thinking of the school system is.  You don't teach them definitions of bigger and smaller first, kids learn what those are by doing.  

Real measuring is for right now, always.  Don't give kids fake measuring, that's mean and ridiculous.  Knowledge shouldn't be broken up into segments and sequestered by age - i'm delighted the teacher wrote that to give me another reminder of how utterly ridiculous the school mentality is.

Answer 5

Children of this age need to know the concept of weighing and measuring. In the water the children can measure how many jugs of water to fill a large container. the children can learn full , empty, half full. Making up play-dough make simple recipe cards with pictures e.g..1 jug of water ,1 tablespoon of salt, 1 table spoon of baby oil and so many spoons of flour. The children enjoy hands on so will be more interested if they can say what comes next. The more the children use this activity they will  become more confident with weighing. Baking can also be very successful. Good luck.

Answer 6

Simple cooking.

Or just playing and weighing with sand and pouring water into a measuring jug.

Measuring themselves. Lie down flat and someone draws round them. Measure their height from that. Or measure feet.

Answer 7

lay out different items the kids would like and let each child choose 2 items and put 1 item in 1 hand and the other item in the other hand and ask witch is heavier trust me they adapt to that very quickly I do it all the time with my 1, 2, and 3 year olds at Charleston preschool.