Cold Measurement

I love to incorporate more than one subject at a time when possible. It not only saves time, but makes connections that are so important for children to understand.

Last week, we were blessed with a dry snow that led to lots of snow drifts. I sent the kids on their merry way with a clipboard and measuring tools in hand. Their job was to find and measure as many snow drifts and icicles as possible, noting measurements on a scrap piece of paper.

After a warm cup of hot chocolate, I pulled out these two notebooking pages from the Snow and Ice NaturExplorers study. (For the record, the pages within the unit are in color. I was out of color ink, so copied them in gray scale.)

They LOVE this kind of math – hands-on, active, meaningful, real. And, I didn’t have one complaint as they joyfully learned about and practiced accurate measuring, ordering mixed/decimal numbers, and completing/creating graphs. Ah, a fun time of math and nature study, indeed. (And I didn’t have to get out in the cold to boot!)