- big cardboard box
- construction paper cut into strips
- markers
- measuring stick
- paper cups
- stacking cubes
- string
- grow
- measure
- plant
MA Standards:
English Language Arts/Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.1: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners during daily routines and play.
English Language Arts/Language/L.PK.MA.1: Demonstrate use of oral language in informal everyday activities.
English Language Arts/Language/L.PK.MA.6: Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, listening to books read aloud, activities, and play.
Mathematics/Measurement and Data/PK.MD.MA.1: Recognize the attributes of length, area, weight, and capacity of everyday objects using appropriate vocabulary (e.g., long, short, tall, heavy, light, big, small, wide, narrow)
Head Start Outcomes
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
Language Development/Expressive Language: Uses language to express ideas and needs.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Language 2: Participate actively in discussions, listen to the ideas of others, and ask and answer relevant questions.
Talk Together: Measuring
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
STEM Key Concepts: Plants grow in places where they get their needs met; Plants often grow in some type of dirt; Measure with nonstandard measurement tools; Measurement is a way of understanding plant growth
ELA Focus Skills: Listening and Speaking, Vocabulary
Tell children that they are going to continue to explore how plants grow. Explain that children are going to learn how to observe and measure “how much” their plants have grown.
- Explain that there are many different ways to measure things. Have a volunteer stand up and point to the child as you say, You can measure how tall something or someone is (put your flat palm on top of child’s head), how wide something or a part of someone is (frame the width of child’s foot with your hands), and how long something or a part of someone’s body is (have child hold out his or her arm and trace it from shoulder to hand).
- Hold up a measuring stick, stacking cubes, construction paper, paper cups, and string, and challenge children to think of ways they can use the materials to measure their plants.