On Friday, Early Math Counts presented at the Opening Minds conference in Chicago.  We spoke about the Early Math Counts site and our upcoming Professional Development series, soon to be available through the Gateways to Opportunity ilearning system.(More to come about that exciting project over the next couple of weeks). At the end of our talk, we presented the attendees with buckets of counting worms and walked through some possible learning activities that could be done with them.  Although the worms we had were a bit different, they reminded me of this post from 2013.

Have you seen these?  These are called Inchworms and they are actually one inch long.  That means they are standard units of measure (because an inch is an inch is an inch) while looking like a non standard unit of measure.  When children use these to measure, they might say, “It is 3 inchworms long,” which also means that it is actually 3 inches long. This is an important step in children’s understandings of measurement, which can be reinforced by laying these inchworms out next to a ruler to show that they really are one inch each.

It might be fun to introduce the “Inchworm Song” as well.  If you don’t know/remember it, it goes like this.

“Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds
You and your arithmetic, you’ll probably go far.
Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds
Seems to me you’d stop and see how beautiful they are.

2 and 2 are 4, 4 and 4 are 8, 8 and 8 are 16, 16 and 16 are 32.”

I like them because….

1.  They are long.  Children can attach lots of these together to create a “super straw” that spans the length of a room, or at least the length of a table.

2.  They are just flimsy enough.  Sometimes, the lack of strength of a material provides just enough of a challenge to make it interesting.

3.  They are versatile.  Children will find a million and one ways to use this manipulative.

The small joints that hold the straws together are a choking hazard for children under 3, so be sure to check this before investing in these.  However, if you do have some materials in a separate place for older children, these would be a good addition to any math center.

Links are one of those really versatile manipulatives that children will play with throughout their young lives.  As infants, they will use them as chew toys as well as to connect their other toys to something.  Later, children will connect them to make chains that are “long” or “longest” or to go across the room.

They can also be used to show numerical differences over distance. For example, stretching a 10-link chain next to a 5-link chain shows that it is twice as long.  You can also explain that the 5 link chain is half as short.

Links provide children with a nonstandard unit of measure. Here is a great lesson plan that uses links as way to measure common household areas.

Click here to see a video of a child using large connecting links in a whole other way.

Learning Goal 7 – Explore Measurement of Objects and Quantities

Learning Standard A

Measure object and quantities using direct comparison methods and non-standard units.

Benchmarks

7.A.ECa  Compare, order, and describe objects according to a single attribute.

7.A.ECb  Use non-standard units to measure objects and quantity.

7.A.ECc  Use vocabulary that describes and compares length, height, weight, capacity, and size.

7.A.ECd  Begin to construct a sense of time though participation in daily activities.

The Example Performance Indicators for the above Benchmarks are:

Use nonstandard units to measure items (e.g., use hands to measure the length of a table).

Know the sequence of the daily schedule and begin to gauge time by progression of the schedule throughout the day (e.g., know that nap time comes after lunch or that outside time comes after snack).

Compare and describe magnitudes of objects (e.g., line up two strings of beads to determine which is longer; arrange blocks from tallest to shortest and describe).

Use appropriate vocabulary when making measurements, such as small, big, short, tall, empty, full, heavy, and light.

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I feel like we have looked specifically at many of the above benchmarks and performance indicators since Early Math Counts has been up and running. The Early Math Counts Team has designed so many great lessons that are available for you to use.  You can explore them here on the site Home Page.  I am also including a few below that  address these specific Benchmarks.

For toddlers, try out the lesson called “Show Me Your Shoe” which asks children to compare the length of their shoes and to use comparison vocabulary to describe the differences between them.

In “Trucks and Blocks” children create their own roads using wooden blocks and then make up stories about cars traveling on short roads and longer roads. “Links and Length” is a lesson that has children measure different objects in the environment using non-standard units of measure.

This little boy was trying to figure out if his two towers of pegs were the same height.  It was really hard because they were so long that they were bending and curving, so their actual lengths were not readily apparent.

His teacher helped him by holding the base of the towers so he could try and hold them straight and then compare them.  She was asking him leading questions that helped him think about how he could compare them, what he wanted her to do to help, and ultimately figure out which one was taller.

At some point, I might have asked him to count the pegs, but that would have been a very difficult task.  Using the pegs as a non standard unit of measure, he could have explored how many pegs each tower had and then considered which one had more, which would then mean “taller”.  However, one-to-one correspondence is really hard when each unit is attached to another.  It is hard to discriminate between the pegs and the colors (it may have been easier if every peg were a different color).

I think he did a great job trying to get them to stand up straight so he could look and see which one was taller.  How would you have helped him figure this out?