Nonstandard Measurement

Nonstandard Measurement can be such a FUN math unit in the classroom. It is relatively easy for students to learn and master and it can be a nice break from the continuous addition, subtraction, and place value that we teach all year long.

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite lessons and activities!

 Car and ramp races! 

This is a simple lesson that gets students measuring and building ramps - a little STEM action for the win! My students work in pairs to build ramps using a clipboard and whatever else they can find and race three cars down the ramp. They label where each one ends with a post it. Then, students measure how far each car went with a nonstandard tool of their choice (cubes, paperclips, erasers, pompoms, etc.) Easy and fun for my students to measure and compare lengths.

*This picture was recreated on my kitchen floor with my son's cars because all my stuff is in storage, but I usually use small matchbox cars from the dollar store*

 Stringy shapes is another fun one. I created a bunch of these stringy shape patterns and my students use yarn to recreate the shape. Then, they straighten out the yarn and measure how long each shape is with centimeter cubes (or any other nonstandard tool). I created 10 different shapes so students like to predict which ones they think are longer and then test them out!

 Misconceptions while measuring are super important to clarify while my students are accurately learning how to measure so I alwayssssssssss like to kick off a lesson with some "fix it" cards. [I use these when teaching all of our math units] They pose a problem that another student has completed incorrectly and I like for my students to identify what is wrong and verbalize how they would fix it.

Crooked paths! 

Using a large piece of construction paper I create two different paths and label them A and B. One line will be straight and the other will be crooked. The end of the straight line will appear longer than the crooked line. Students will first estimate and explain which line they think is longer and why. Then, students will measure the lines with a nonstandard measurement tool and see if their estimations are correct. My students are always surprised when they find out that even though the straight line appears to be longer, the crooked one is!

I put all the above lessons with recording sheets (and lots more) in a little nonstandard measurement pack for you! You can click the image below to see more and download the preview to get an idea of the other printables and activities included:

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Measurement, Time, Graphing, and Data

I don't know about you, but in my first grade classroom I feel like I teach addition, subtraction and place value ALL.YEAR.LONG. 

Well, that's because, I basically do, which makes sense because it is so very important for my students to master for real world application and because they need to know it to succeed in 2nd grade!

While that's all fine and dandy, but I do love a little break in our math block and when I teach measurement, time, and data, we get the fun break we need! I like to make these standards as fun as possible with lotssssss of hands-on learning!

I collected and organized lots of the activities I have done over the year for the following standards:

For each of these 4 categories there are 4-5 hands on lessons (some of each are shown above)!

I also included task cards, explanation tasks, sorts, and practice printable pages for each category. You can see some of those below:

If you think your students could use activities and lessons like these, you can download the preview and take a look by clicking the image below:

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Measurement Fun & Plants!

We were back to business in room 102 and we were all about measurement!

Non-standard measurement that is.

Here are a few of the fun activities we did this week:

Measure Me! The kids were giggling like crazy as they made estimates about each part of their body and then measured how long their body was in cubes! We measured our heads, our hands, our feet, our waist, and more!

Crooked paths! Each pair of students got a piece of construction paper with two lines on it. The top line (A) was a straight line and the bottom line (B) was crooked and ended before the end of A. We looked at our lines and had a whole discussion about which one we thought was longer. 20 of my 21 kids thought A was longer because "it is straight" "it looks way longer" and "the end of the line is closer to the edge of the paper than B." Great ideas! Then one of my littles raised his hand and quietly said...

"I think B is longer" the kids couldn't believe he was saying this! I asked him why and he responded... "I'm imagining it to be straight" and I swear my teacher heart skipped a beat! I just smiled a BIG ole smile and said... "Very interesting! Let's measure them now and see what happens! We then measured each line with paper clips and recorded how long they were. To their surprise B was a couple paper clips longer!

On the other side of the paper were two really crooked paths. The top one had a lot more "crooks" in it and basically looked like a zig-zag line all the way across, while the bottom one had less "crooks." By the end of the lesson, my students realized that the more zig-zaggy the line was, the longer the line generally was!

This is a lesson straight from Investigations called "animal jumps." When the students got back from lunch there were huge pieces of masking tape all over the classroom labeled with different letters. I told the kids that while they were gone all these animals came into our classroom and jumped all over the place! They did not believe me in the slightest, but I kept up with my silly lie anyway.

The students got an envelope filled with 3 different measuring tools:
popsicle sticks
baby feet
basketball player feet

They had to travel around to each animal's jump and make an estimate for each tool. They then practiced measuring each line and at the end we talked about why the same line would have different measurements based on the tool we measured with - aka why is the kangaroo's jump only 5 basketball player feet?! when it is 22 baby feet long?!

It was an exhausting week, but the kids loved it! Next week in math, we move onto data and graphing!

I also wanted to share that I finished my plant unit and it is uploaded on TPT! We are working on insects right now, but then we are moving onto plants!

Here is a little sneak peek:

 A fun science experiment growing lima beans complete with observing journals, science readers, fact sheets, and an art/poetry project at the end!

 Literacy activities such as non-fiction close reads, fact/opinion sorts and plenty of word work centers.

Math centers and ready-to-use math printable games and activities.

Here are a few of the centers I already have prepped:

Of course I snagged these adorable felt spring containers from the Target $1 spot to hold my centers!

 Buzzing for Digraphs! Students match up the flower with the correct bee header and record!

Vowel puzzles! Students match up the long and short vowel pictures and create the little puzzles correctly. There is a flower with 3 pictures for each of the 5 short vowels and the 5 long vowels (with a recording sheet).

Sentence Scrambles! My kids struggle with this, so I added 6 sentence scrambles with plant facts on them for the kids to practice! Each sentence is color coded and have a symbol to match to the recording sheet. That way I can check to see they completed each one correctly!

To see more, click on any of the images above or click HERE!

Not that this post isn't LONG enough already, but I am a little late to join the party. Some of my Spring items are on sale from now through tomorrow night (3/30)!

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