Third graders have been diving into the world of measurement recently in math!

What We’ve Been Exploring

This week, we focused on some important metric units: grams and kilograms for mass, milliliters and liters for liquid volume, and meters and kilometers for distance. One of the big ideas we kept coming back to was knowing which unit makes sense for what you’re measuring. Would you measure the distance to grandma’s house in centimeters? Would you weigh a strawberry in kilograms? Our students had a lot of fun thinking through those kinds of questions.

Our Classroom Weigh-In Activity

Students got to choose an object from around the classroom, make their best estimate of how much it might weigh, and then check it on a real scale. The results surprised a lot of us! We discovered that a bigger object doesn’t always mean a heavier object. A large, fluffy pillow might weigh much less than a small, solid book. Size and mass are not the same thing!

Real Life All Around Us

We connected these skills to everyday situations like grocery shopping, cooking and baking, traveling, giving directions, and weighing objects.

Keep the Learning Going at Home

Measurement is easy to practice without it even feeling like math! Let your child help measure ingredients in the kitchen, look at food labels together at the store, or pick two objects at home and guess which one is heavier before finding a way to check.