Measuring up

Grades 1-3

Take a sewing tape measure outside and into the woods.   A fairly loose way to determine the age of a tree without cutting it down and counting rings is to measure the circumference (distance around.)  A tree’s age in years is approximately the same as its circumference in inches.

 

Grades 4-5

Find a can of paint in your house.  Read the label to see how much area can be covered with one can.  Using a tape measure find a part of your house that could be covered by one can of the paint.  Kids, this is a math question.  Please don’t see how much the can will cover by actually painting!

The same could be done with grass seed.  How many bags you will need to seed your whole back yard?

 

Grades 6-8

Ruler Guestimation – Just like guessing a number between 1 and 100 only you are trying to find a number between 1 and 12 on a ruler.  These numbers, however, include all the fractional parts of an inch.  For example, 

The number to find is 6 9/16

Guess: 6

Response: higher

Guess : 7

Response: lower

Guess: 6 ½

Response: higher

Guess: 6 3/8

 

And so on.