How to measure nearly anything is a skill that adults often take for granted. Teaching how to measure different household items weight is a simple way to start the fun with kids. This easy science-based activity is what Kids Activities Blog is all about. We love when kids activities sneaks in a lesson amid play – it all just makes it more fun.
Preschool is the perfect age to introduce science concepts to children. There are plenty of ways to achieve this introduction without using complex words (although children at this age will certainly pick up and retain those terms) and experiments.
How to Measure
Recently my son, like many preschoolers, became interested in our scale. He wants to weigh everything from himself to me to his brother to shoes to his trains. You name it. He wants to weigh it.
A few weeks ago I noticed him exploring our salad spinner. He began to put rocks and various other items in the salad spinner and, with great care and curiosity, he began to add and take away objects of different sizes (and weights). He noticed that it “was tough” to push the spinner and make it go around when there was more weight in the spinner. He also noticed how the spinner became full with the lighter objects but it was still easy to push and spin, but only a few rocks made the spinner tough to get going.
At 3 years old, children can not only discover these concepts on their own but they can indirectly introduce far more complex ideas to their developing minds. So that when the time is right their brains will have that foundation to truly take an idea and run with it later in life and learning.
Teaching How to Measure
The cool thing about weight and many things in science is that you can feel the concept. You experience it with your hands, your eyes and often your whole body. So, at the age of three, children have the opportunity to educate their senses to give order to their environment and to better prepare them for the next phases of development and learning. Fascinating, right?
In Montessori, weight is described using the term “baric”. The baric sense is the sense of the ability to feel different weights and pressures.
Direct aims: fine motor skills, baric sense
Indirect aims: math, science and language
Language: heavy, light, fast, slow
Variation: Using a blindfold
More Kids Activities
How to measure and more fun can be found on some of our other kids activities…some even continue our How to Measure lesson.