Math foundations and a story!

SundaySeeds, because everything starts with a seed...

Our favourite: a story + math = strong skills!

Our story today is an old favourite Jack and the Beanstalk - as a way to introduce

measurement.

Measuring is a form of counting and a great introduction to concepts of size, comparisons, and estimating. These skills are all part of a strong math foundation!

As adults, we use standard units of measurement - grams, kilometres, litres.

It is easier for our little ones to use non-standard measurement as we can tailor these to a child's age, stage and interests and they don't have to understand the metric system!

What can we use? Anything at hand. crayons, favourite cups, hand span, steps...

Here are three activities that will be fun to follow up our story:

1. Draw your child's hand and then draw a much, much larger giant's hand. Count how many beans you need to cover the small hand and then the giant hand. You could ask your child to guess how many more they would need...

2. Draw a giant foot on the driveway or on a large sheet of paper or cardboard. Measure the distance around the giant's foot in child footsteps or children's feet or with lengths of string

3. On your next walk, look for small and large items. Decide on a measurement for each:

"small" could be anything smaller than a child's fingernail and "big" could be larger than an adult's hand. Take two bags, labelled small and big with you and save the treasures!

We will have more ideas about measurement next week......