Measuring

A fun way to introduce measuring for children is to measure with nonstandard units. Children have a hard time understanding inches and feet, so instead we begin measuring with "units."

In this activity we paired students up and asked them to measure each other with anything they found in the room. For example, someone might be 14 blocks or 20 magnets.

Students tried everything from books, to cars, to blocks and instruments.
One students asked, "What would happen if I pulled my legs up?" We predicted and tested his theory that "It would be smaller."
We made other predictions about how many units it would take, what would happen if we changed the units or which students would be more units.
We documented our measurements with drawings, numbers and words.
We compared the size of students.

Measuring with rulers and measuring tapes came later. Instead of calling them inches, we just called them units. After teaching how to start at the zero on the clear rulers, students would measure any item in the classroom. We would compare and sort items (which are more/less than 5 units?) We used rulers to measure sticks, baskets, chairs, tables, arms, rocks,books and anything they could get their hands on. They measured in pairs and worked together with both rulers.

Students were all given their own rulers (the template can be found here) and measured by "units."
Vocabulary words like bigger, larger, smaller, smallest, etc were defined and used regularly.