Thursday, April 19, 2012

Measurement Unit







Welcome back! I am finally able to update the website now that my "technological difficulties" are resolved. Technology is always wonderful when it's working! =)

The past few weeks we've had the pleasure of having a Faculty of Education candidate from the local university teaching the Kindergarten children. Ms. Dhaliwal's math focus for teaching has been on measurement. When we talk about measurement in Kindergarten, we are talking about a wide variety of topics including: height, length, the passage of time, surface, mass, using the balance scale and rulers and so much more! We are talking about using standard measurement tools and non standard tools (e.g. "how many pennies long is your hand?".


Ms. Dhaliwal designed a problem solving based task on measurement. The students were tooking to see how many "worms tall" the children are. Children were placed in their House Teams (Which they named accordingly). The task was to measure one person
in their group using non standard measurement (paper worms). Then after performing the task, the groups reported back to the class and finally, we compared the different heights of the children in the class that we measured.

The children did a great job on this task and are working better in groups. This is a challenge in itself. They are learning to work cooperatively with a high degree of focus in order to solve a problem. They are learning both to "share the job" and to make sure that they give everyone a turn.

The students also been using rulers through out the classroom to cut out playdough worms of different lengths for Ms. Dhawali's "fishing trip" coming up and have also used rulers to measure items in the classroom.

At home, you can continue to talk about different terms such as longer/shorter, heavier/lighter. You can also involve your child when using measuring cups for

making food/baking items. As well, have your child hold two items in his/her hands and guess "which one is heavier? lighter?". These types of every day activities make children understand that Math is not a topic in isolation but rather as we say at our school, Math is EVERYWHERE!







Mrs. S.