Measuring with “The Foot Book!”

We will be starting measuring when we get back from spring break.  Yes, our spring break is NEXT week!  So, so early!  I am super excited for the break, but it will be a long stretch from the middle of March to May!  We do not get any days off for Easter.

Since we spent the beginning of the week reviewing money and telling time, plus the test….we will spend the last few days having a lot of fun practicing non-standard measurement!  The Foot Book was a great way to start this off!  Why a board book?  This girl ordered the book last year without reading the description.  Anyone else do that?  I will say that when I am watching which books kiddos grab for read to self time, the little board books are one of the first ones gone!

Each student first traced their shoe.  This sweetheart was working so hard to get her shoe traced!  A few of us still need a lot of practice with tracing!  You can see in the picture that we made our estimations for each item BEFORE we started measuring!  I didn’t even pass out the manipulatives until after our estimations were completed.  I showed each item on the ELMO against my own foot and modeled how I was making an “educated guess.”  We also discussed the length of each item and how it would affect our estimations.  And if Miss Peare’s estimation was 10 unifix cubes, should my estimation be 40?

I walked around making sure each student was lining up at the heel of each foot and made the connection to why this is important and how it could change our measurement.

The paper clips were tricky for the little hands!  As you can see from this recording sheet, our estimations and actual measurements were not too far off!

To help keep this activity organized, students were only given one manipulative at a time!

As an extension, we discussed the antonyms found in the book!  Each student then picked a set of antonyms to list on each foot and illustrated!

Grab the recording sheet here!