On a whim, I thought we would try something new today while homeschooling my kindergartner. I follow a wonderful curriculum with many varied activities, and our current unit covers emergent measurement skills. Today’s lesson was a cut/paste activity for putting objects in order from tallest to shortest. After seeing my little girl less than enthused about using her scissors and glue, though, I needed a way that we could make this concept more authentic, engaging, and meaningful! So, after introducing the concept of taller/shorter just yesterday (we had already done bigger/smaller, longer/shorter, more/less than), I thought we would tie it all together using objects around the house.
The object of the activity is to find five (or more) objects around your house that can be visibly measured and compared using any of the above categories (bigger/smaller, taller/shorter, more/less than, etc.), and then order them accordingly. I tried to find objects in different rooms of my house, although I could have easily found all of what I needed in the kitchen!
1. More than/Less than
I started off with the concept of more than/less than. My little girl was able to look at the fruit bowl and quickly determine that we had more bananas than apples. When I asked her how many more, she had to actually count for a minute to determine the difference. We used one-to-one counting to see that we had 3 more bananas than apples. I extended this concept to ask her why she thinks we have more bananas than apples. There really isn’t a correct answer, but I’m trying to get her to start thinking more critically, and speaking more intelligibly, so I thought this would be a good question. She did say that we had more apples but “Daddy ate them”, which indicates to me she has an understanding of the process of subtraction.
2. Bigger/Smaller
While we were near the kitchen, I decided we would next revisit the concept of bigger/smaller. I took out different-sized tupperware from my pantry, set them on the stove, and asked her to put them in order from biggest to smallest. She was able to perform this task with no problem whatsoever. This may have been a little too easy for her, but I wanted to make sure I’m not assuming she knows something when in fact she doesn’t. I included some follow-up questions, such as what leftover dinner we would store in the biggest tupperware (spaghetti) and what we would store in the smallest one (green beans). We also learned the concept of “medium” this past week, so I asked her which ones were medium-sized, and she pointed to both the middle ones. Good job. 🙂
3. Taller/Shorter
To assess her understanding of taller/shorter (which we just formally learned yesterday), we stayed in the kitchen and used boxed items from my pantry. I placed 5 boxes on the stove and asked her to put them in order from shortest to tallest. She had a more difficult time with this one and had to move boxes around a few times before she put them in the correct order. After the first couple of times of putting them in the wrong order, she just stared at the boxes because she didn’t know what to do to get a box between two others without thinking she was doing something wrong if she had to move one. All of my teaching experience has been in grades 5 – 12, so there are things that I didn’t realize I would have to teach a kindergartner, like the fact that it’s okay to move things around to clear up space while you practice. This makes sense…we move things around to clear up space in our working memory, so this is just the concrete version of it.
Just for good measure, we did another taller/shorter activity in the bathroom using various sizes of beauty products.
And we ordered some books from tallest to shortest and shortest to tallest:
4. Longer/Shorter
Teaching the difference between long/short and tall/short was a little bit of a challenge. I finally explained it in a way that she understood…that tall/short is for things that are standing up, and that long/short are for things that are maybe laying down. It’s not scientific, but she seemed to grasp it! Finding long/short objects of relatively the same object family was difficult in my house. This isn’t required, but I wanted to keep things somewhat similar. Anyway, I thought…belts? Nope, my husband (who is the only one in this household who owns a belt) owns all the same size of belt. I tried using remotes, but three out of 4 of them were so close to the same size that I decided against it. I finally decided on shoes. Perfect!
As my daughter was putting the shoes in order from longest to shortest, I had to remind her to place the ends of the shoes against the edge of the gray rug. I needed to explain (several times) that to accurately measure length, we have to measure all items from the same starting point. Once she got the shoes in the correct order, it was critical thinking time! Why is mama’s shoe bigger than anyone else’s? (because I’m older than anyone else). Why are the last two shoes about the same length? (they are for the twins, who are the same age. They have the same size foot). Where would Daddy’s boots go in this order? (at the very top).
We also ordered some books from longest to shortest. I had to explain again that the books needed to all start at the same point in order to compare them accurately. I had to help her with lining the spines up so that she could compare them. I probably should have placed a yardstick on the carpet, but we got through it!
5. Heavier than/Lighter than
Technically, we haven’t yet learned the concept of weight, but my kids were interested in the scale while we were in the bathroom ordering beauty products from tallest to shortest. So, I had each of them step on the scale, and then we compared the numbers. The conversation lended itself to what weight is, how we measure weight, and who was heavier and lighter (and why). To provide even more of a basis of comparison, I did step on the scale too, but I’m not posting that picture here!
50 pounds 
40 pounds
Overall, this activity took about 45 minutes (I had to navigate around 16-month-old twins during the time downstairs, which included making bottles and changing a dirty diaper during the lesson, so it may take you less time). I think my daughter (and my 3-year-old, for that matter) really did enjoy the activity and gained a great understanding of the categories of measurement and ordering objects according to different characteristics. This activity worked well for my daughter because she has undiagnosed ADHD (just believe me on this one!) and I get much better results with her learning when we are able to do activities that move and engage her in kinesthetic manners.
Take a minute to think about objects around your house, and you’ll start to notice how you can use these objects to help your Pre-K or Kindergarten student practice his or her early measurement skills. Have fun with this activity…make it a scavenger hunt, have your child choose objects (especially stuffed animals or trucks), or even go outside to find and compare objects!
I hope you enjoyed this post and took away some ideas to use everyday objects around your house for teaching important early measurement skills! Tomorrow, we are going to the zoo to practice our map skills. We’ll see how that goes!