Teaching - Weights & measures (US + metric)

[cbollin]

Last year in public school they went over measurement in math - ft, in, yards, cm, m, kg, g, etc. She didn't get it then, even when I, her dad and her grandparents worked with her. If you show her how big a cm is vs. a m and then you ask her if the height of a man would be 165 m or cm she will get the question right BUT if that same question is on a test she simply won't remember how big a cm is and will get it wrong. The same goes with feet vs. yards. She simply can't seem to remember that a foot is 12 inches and a yard is 36 inches or even really about how big an inch is except that it's small. I don't understand her struggle with the measurement issue.

So, should I spend even more time going over measurements with her before going on to 2B or should I just try to work measurement into our daily conversations? And, yes, she did fine on her daily work when we went over measurements but she could always look at the examples in the textbook to help her remember what the different measurements were. With the test she simply had to visualize each measurement instead of having something to refer to. She simply can't seem to do that. She doesn't have a sense of measurement and spatial relationships. I would love to know if anyone else has had issues with this. Thanks!

Buy a yard stick (meter stick too) and a ruler and go over it in real life. Let her use the ruler and stick. Most kids need the concrete at this stage. Just trying to visualize it is way too abstract. Give them the right tools to use to help them.

make a chart on your kitchen wall with everyone's height in your family. Show that no one is over 9 feet tall (or just over 2.5 meters) (or whatever the maximum height of your ceiling is of course). So, if the number is bigger than that and talking about a person's height, it can't be in meters, can it? But help your child talk out loud through that process. Don't expect them to just go through the thoughts on their own.

Measure distances around your living room and kitchen and write the results down in big numbers so you can see it all day long for a long time.

The hardest part is in helping the child go to the abstract lines in a book. There are times that a 2 inch bar means 2 inches and times it means something else. I let my kid play with zoom in and zoom out maps on the 'net to get a feel for that. And we keep at it. They will get more and more of this later in math in the years to come.

Let her have visual tools and charts in front of her. It's ok. In a classroom teachers have charts up all the time. When a kid is bored they can look at those charts even when the subject has changed.

My middle child (now age 9) struggled with the measurement concepts in 2A/2B last year, too.
-crystal

[dhudson]

Agreeing with Crystal, I found that using real life was the best foundation. You might take a day or two before moving on to 2B just measuring things around the house. My kids like to measure outside on the sidewalk with chalk lines where you can compare feet and meters or cm versus inches.

I've never tested mine to see if they could move on. I figure that if they score well on the Review at the end of the book we move on. If they don't we review the concepts they missed until they get it.

[TriciaMR]

One thing I have done - get a ruler or tape measure and find a body part that is one inch long and one cm. Perhaps the distance between the end of the thumb and first knuckle is an inch? Perhaps the distance of the end of her pinky finger is a cm? You get the idea. Then, let her write that on her finger (1 inch, 1 cm) so she can compare a real object that is that long. Measure how long her arms are, legs are, etc, to get an idea what 1 foot vs. 3 feet (or 12 inches vs 36 inches) looks like.

I have no problem measuring stuff, but estimating how long, or tall something is, I'm no good at. I have to remember a door opening is about 7 feet tall (we actually have some 7 foot ceilings in our house), so a regular ceiling is eight feet.

When I read David and Goliath to my kids, I talk about how he would be taller than the ceiling. Now, when we read it, they always say, "That would be bigger than our ceiling, Mom!"

-Trish

[microcarter]

I have no problem measuring stuff, but estimating how long, or tall something is, I'm no good at. I have to remember a door opening is about 7 feet tall (we actually have some 7 foot ceilings in our house), so a regular ceiling is eight feet.

This seems to be the problem that Sage has also. We've had her take a yardstick, ruler and tape measure around to do all the measuring and she does fine as long as she has something concrete in her hands. It's the estimating without a measuring device that she can't seem to grasp. I have tried to give her frames of reference (like the door) but it doesn't seem to work yet. We'll continue to work on it periodically but in the meantime we'll go on to 2B.

I'm so used to her getting grades in public school that I suppose I'm struggling with how to determine her progress this year. It's one of those things I need to learn to let go of. Sigh!

[my3boys]

Maybe you could find a measurement workbook (like the ones they have a Walmart) and just do a quick overview before going on to the next level. I think visualizing measurement comes more naturally for some people then others. I cannot visualize any measurements (I've often wondered if this is some sort of learning disability). I do the same as another poster - have references that I can compare things to like my own height and weight, the general height of a room or door. Come to think of it, if you just spent some time each day measuring and weighing things (like food you are cooking) she may get enough references to catch on.

[cbollin]

I need ideas for Measurement in Singapore 2A using kg, g, lb, oz.

I need some ideas for teaching the type of measurement used in Singapore 2A. It talks about the child holding a kg. in their hand and measuring g, lb., and oz. I don't have a scale and wondered if you have any other ideas about how I could teach this to my daughter.
Thank you!

For the purposes in Singapore 2, I just looked at measurements on boxes and bags in the kitchen cupboard.

We had a 5 pound bag of flour.
4 pounds of sugar
1 pound of coffee beans
I had a one and two pound bag of rice.
and some bags of dry beans too.

The cereal boxes in our house had both ounces and kilograms on them. That was good enough for the purpose on p. 64 of 2A text.

Depending on the size and material of a paperclip, you could have the child hold 1 or 2 paperclips to be a gram (don't get too nit picky on it of course. It is close enough for what they do on that page in the book.)

And then take a look on p. 68 of 2A text for some ideas of objects that weigh certain amount of grams.

For how an ounce feels in your hand, we winged it a bit. Depending on the weight of a penny and the year it was made, it can take about 9 or 11 pennies to make an ounce. So, for the purpose in 2A, we used 10 pennies in our hand to get a feel for an ounce. I didn't feel the need to have a calibrated scale for that exercise. It was close enough.

-crystal

[donnagio]

I did about the same kind of thing last year, and it seemed to work. Donna

[Archiver2]

Additional ideas might be located on other boards:
First Grade / Measuring: viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3556