Length and Mass

Everyday last week started as usual with French Lesson, penny whistle lesson, spelling practice, math review, and reading.  Grant and I continued to practice length measurement on Monday.  I told Grant a fun story of how people used to measure everything with their body parts.  Such as, a digit, a cubit, an arm's length, a foot, or a stride.  After I was done with the story, Grant and I went around the school room and measured various items. He wrote it all down in his lesson book.

I also read Johanna this book:

On Tuesday, we continued with measurement.  I told him a funny story about what happened when everyone's measurements were different, and the arguments that may have caused.  We talked again about the introduction of a standard of measurement, and then we went around the room and measured items with a tape measure. As we measured, he wrote them on his lesson book page.

On Wednesday, we used a "Y" shaped stick we found on our Tuesday morning walk, and Grant helped me wrap yarn around it. 

Once we were finished with that, we weaved in various Autumn nature treasures we collected on our walk. This project was directed towards Johanna, but everyone wanted to help.

After that, Grant and I began talking about weight measurement.  We talked about a time when some men were dishonest and had "true" weights, and not-so-true weights so they could cheat others.  People even began to carry around their own weights so they knew they wouldn't get cheated.

We talked about the standard weight they set using grains of wheat.  60 grains of wheat = 1 shekel.  We counted out 60 grains, weighed them, and figured out what a shekel was in ounces.  After that, we used a scale to measure various items in the room in ounces, and then also talked about what they would be in shekels.

Here he was trying to see how many of the toys it would take to weigh one pound.  He was trying to get them stacked up without them falling off the scale.

This was the page from Grant's lesson book:

On Thursday, We talked more about measurement, and Grant had some time to use measuring cups and beans to see how many 1/4 cups it took to make at cup, how many 1/3 cups, etc.

Afterward, we headed up to the kitchen to make cookies where I let Grant do all the measuring.  He got more practice measuring, and we all got yummy cookies!