Metric In School
Went to my daughters daycare on Monday and taught them all a bit about measurement (they're all 3.5 to 4 years old so it's all introductory).
The Learning Game had 1 meter rulers with millimeter, centimeter and decimeter markings on it (including with alternating colors to make it easy to see on one side). Apparently approved by the USMA. I also took in some fluid measures and a scale.
I'd like to find metric only tape measures (not the tool kind, the just a tape kind) that are similarly marked and 1.5m or 2m long to take in as well. If you know where I could get them I'd appreciate a comment....
We sat around and let the children measure themselves (they're all between 0.97m and 1.05m tall) and I described the relationship between fluid and mass (including a demonstration). We then spent a bit of time measuring items sitting around the classroom and some coins and I got the children to add weights to the scale so they could see it level out when we got to the right weight (it's a balance scale). I also spent some time describing how metric worked in terms of prefixes and units of 10 (which, in all honesty, probably went over their heads, but it's never too soon to start teaching these things).
on 2007-09-21 at 03:10
