Foot Fun: A Measurement Activity

Jessica has been learning all about measuring at school. One of her recent home learning activities was to measure different objects around the house and compare them. She had a paper measuring tape to help her with this, but measuring doesn’t have to be done with a tape measure. Today I’m sharing a guest post from Holly Jachowski from Education.com featuring a fun activity all about measuring in feet.

Pictures of feet drawn on green, red and yellow construction paper - "Foot Fun: A measurement activity"

To understand measurement, kids need direct experiences with comparing and ordering objects. But that doesn’t necessarily mean sitting down with a ruler! It might mean figuring out which jump rope is the longest, or which ball is larger than the bouncy ball, but smaller than the basketball. When children do this type of comparison, they likely won’t even notice that they are building and practicing their maths abilities! This fun measurement activity uses feet to compare objects, but not the ones found on rulers and measuring sticks…the feet on your child’s own body!

 

 

What You Need:

  • Construction paper
  • Markers
  • Scissors
  • Household objects
  • Your family’s feet!

 

What You Do:

Trace a copy of your child’s right foot onto construction paper. Give her a stack of the paper and ask her to trace each family member’s right foot on a separate sheet. Cut out each foot pattern and label it with the name of its owner. Examine the foot patterns and discuss similarities and differences. Who has the biggest foot? The smallest? Are any of them the same size? Ask your child to place the foot patterns in order from largest to smallest and from smallest to largest.

 

Much of measurement is about comparing things. Challenge your child to use her foot cut-out and find something longer than, shorter than, and about the same size as her foot. Give her construction paper and markers and ask her to trace a model of these items. Recording findings is an essential organisational tool and helps your child learn how real-life mathematicians and scientists record their findings in order to discuss their work with others.

 

Ask your child to choose another foot pattern to measure things around your home. For example, how many Dad foot lengths long is the kitchen table? How many Mum foot lengths wide is the refrigerator? Use the foot cut-outs from other family members to measure the same household objects and compare the results. Did it take more or less Mum foot lengths to measure the kitchen table?

 

Ask your child to walk from his bedroom to the front door. How many steps does it take? Record the number on a piece of paper and then have another member of the family do the same thing. How many steps does it take them? Was it more or less than your child’s answer? Discuss why. Then graph your results. An easy way to do this is to write the names of each of the family members on the bottom of a piece of paper, going left to right. Above each name, draw the number of feet it took to reach the door. (For example, if it took 12 steps, stack 12 foot pictures on top of each other.)

 

With practice like this, your child is sure to enjoy measuring up!

Mummascribbles

4 thoughts on “Foot Fun: A Measurement Activity

  1. Ah this is a sweet idea! Libby seems to understand measurement quite well, which is odd as she has no real perception of distance in terms of sight. It makes me wonder whether she’s just repeating what she’s been told so I might try this exercise to see if she really understands it.
    Nat.x

    1. It will be interesting to see how Libby finds this given she doesn’t have distance perception sight-wise. That said, my husband is the same with his sight and yet he has no problems flying model aeroplanes, which he was told he wouldn’t be able to do because of that lack of distance perception.

  2. What a lovely idea to be able to do something like this at home. With Zach starting school in September, I’m sure I’ll be having fun like this in no time!!! Thanks for linking up with #TwinklyTuesday

    1. It is a fun activity – the girls enjoyed giving it a try. Lovely to link up again, thank you for hosting 🙂

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