Have you heard of the Mouse Math series? They have the most adorable math books. One of my favorites is If the Shoe Fits by Jennifer Dussling. It is a wonderful book to use when introducing appropriate non-standard measuring tools. It has the cutest storyline about two mice that find a shoe and wonder if it will fit in their playhouse.
After reading the story, we sorted out non-standard tools on our anchor chart by what would be the best to use and which would not. Next, we made tool boxes and each student sorted their own tools.
The next day we measured out how many paper clips long the playroom in the story is…
…and then measured our shoe to see if it would fit in the playroom. We loved this activity.
After measuring their shoe with paper clips, they had to explain why or why not their shoe would fit in the playhouse. This was a great way to incorporate problem solving into our measurement unit.
We also worked a lot on our measurement vocabulary. I encouraged them to use these words as much as possible throughout our unit.
Another great measurement book that we read was Inch by Inch by Leo Lionni. While reading, we stopped and measured different birds from the story with inchworms and recorded the measurements on our anchor chart.
I like to record our measurements on sticky notes that way I can reuse my anchor charts year after year.
Afterwards, we made our very own birds and measured the different parts of them with inchworms.
We also measured parts of our friends with inchworms.
They were cracking me up during this activity! Saying “aaaaahhhhh a worm is on me!!!” Too funny!
We have had lots of fun measuring with my Math in a Snap Measurement pack. You can check out a few other activities with did with mentor texts here.
