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40+ of the Best Children’s Books About Measurement

byCindy Last Updated

These books about measurement are wonderful for introducing children to mathematical concepts and helping bring gentle understanding to confusing topics.

Measurement is way more than simply learning how to use a ruler! In fact, there are several fundamental categories of mathematical concepts that count as types of measurement: length, weight, area, volume, time, sorting by attributes, and graphing data.

This post covers the most typical forms of measurement – length, area, volume, capacity, and weight. Look out for upcoming posts covering picture books that explore time and data measurements.

Measurement Picture Books

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Books About Measurement for Kids

You’ll notice that some of the books focus more on non-standard measurements, while others reinforce the idea of standard measurements. Let me explain the difference, just in case you’re not familiar with it. A standard measurement uses a tool like a tape measure, scale, or clock. It’s called a standard measurement because the tools are widely used and accepted as accurate by almost everyone.

Non-standard measurement, on the contrary, uses tools that no one accepts as the “standard” and yet things can still be measured with them. For example, when you ask a child to place Cheerios alongside the length of a book and you say, “This book is 23 Cheerios long,” your child has used a non-standard tool (the Cheerios) to measure the book. That measurement is correct according to the tool, but it’s not the tool most people would use to measure the length of anything. It’s non-standard.

Non-standard tools are beneficial for children to use when they are just beginning to learn about measurement concepts. Using things like Cheerios helps build an understanding that each new Cheerio represents a growing length. Basic understanding like this helps all those seemingly strange lines and numbers on a standard measuring tool make more sense in the end!

Picture Books About Length

When considering the measurement topic of length, it also includes width and height. The standard measurements in the U.S. tend to be in the units of inches, feet, yards, and miles. At the same time, the rest of the world typically uses the metric units of millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers. These books are helpful for all types of length measurements, including non-standard ones.

Be sure to check out my free lesson idea that goes along with How Big Is a Foot?

               

 

Picture Books About Area

Area is the measurement of how much space the surface of a flat area takes up. The measurement units are the same as those for measuring length using the basic formula l·w=area (l=length, w=width). This concept is definitely one that can benefit from extensive practice with non-standard measurements before moving on to finding actual measurements.

       

 

Picture Books About Volume and Capacity

Volume is the measurement of how much space a 3-D object takes up. Volume is measured using the same units as length, with the basic formula l·w·h=volume (l=length, w=width, h=height).

Here is a simple idea to help your children “see” and understand volume.

Similarly, capacity is the measurement of how much of something a container can hold. In the U.S., capacity is usually measured in units of an ounce, cup, pint, quart, and gallon. In metric units, the measurements are based on the liter – milliliter, centiliter, liter, deciliter, kiloliter, etc.

Don’t miss creating this fun model to help your children understand capacity.

         

 

Picture Books About Weight

Weight is the measurement of how heavy something is. The standard measurement in the U.S. tends to be in the units of ounces, pounds, and tons, while the metric units are milligrams, grams, and kilograms. Most of these books tend to use the U.S. measurement units.

         

 

Picture Books About Angle Measurements

Angles officially fit into the math category of geometry, but there is quite a lot of measuring that happens when angles are involved! These few books will be helpful introductions to that.

   

 

Watch for more posts about measurement soon! There will be one on the topic of time and money, and another on the topic of sorting and graphing.

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