Explorer Blog

Nonstandard Measurement

As we were enjoying a lovely morning drawing outside, the girls started tracing their feet.  I thought this was a great opportunity to explore nonstandard units of measurement . . . the teacher in me embraces authentic educational opportunities!  You will need construction paper, markers and scissors.  We started by tracing our feet and cutting them out. We labeled the feet with our names and right away the girls were comparing the size of their feet.  "My foot is bigger than yours," Alexandra remarked.  We also labeled the left and the right foot.  Of course, they wanted to trace their hands and cut them out too.  We labeled those as well.  Then, I asked the girls to find five items that were smaller than their feet and five items that were bigger than their feet. They had a great time wandering around the yard, exploring and testing objects. They each returned with ten items and showed me the five objects that were smaller than their feet and the five objects that were larger than their feet.  They were both so proud of their findings!  My older daughter, Alexandra, then wanted to measure how many "feet" our bench was in length.  I asked her to estimate or make her best guess before she measured.  She estimated 12 of Alexandra's feet. Then, she started lining up her feet and found that it measured 7 of Alexandra's feet and nearly 8 of Margo's feet!  What a great way to make math fun!

Kara Tuohy
MW2s and MWF