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Your preschooler will soon be venturing off to kindergarten. You will want to teach him/her some basic everyday math skills and make him/her aware of other math activities. While your child will not need to know how to measure to enter kindergarten, he/she should at least be aware of the many ways we use measurements in our day to day life. He/she should also have a basic idea of the tools we use for measurement.
Teaching your preschooler about the measurements we use in day to day life can be a lot of fun for both of you. Naturally, since your preschooler is so very egotistical, you will want to start with a measurement of your child. This will rope him/her right in to the study of measurement.
Compare your preschooler’s height to the height of your cat, dog, horse, or other pet. Talk about the terms taller, shorter, bigger, and smaller. Encourage your preschooler to compare the sizes of other people, pets, and objects.
Study a ruler or tape measure together. Go for the basics. Look at an inch. Look at a foot. Look at a yard. Find as many things around the house as you can that are an inch long, a foot long, or a yard long. Let your child draw an inch, a foot, and a yard. Let your child draw things that are an inch long, a foot long, and a yard long. These type of activities reinforce the concepts of measurement in your preschooler’s mind.
Play “guesstimate“ and estimate the sizes of household objects! This will teach your child valuable math higher order thinking skills. Look at objects around your home and try to :“guesstimate” the height of a coffee cup or the width of a book. Discuss the terms height and width with your preschooler before you play this game. After everyone that is playing makes their guesstimate, measure the object in question to see who guessed nearest to its size.
Let your preschooler help you bake a cake, make cookies, or prepare a simple meal. Discuss the different tools you use in the kitchen to measure wet and dry ingredients. What does a cup of milk look like? How about a cup of flour? Are they the same or different? What is bigger, a teaspoon or a tablespoon? Show your preschooler wet measuring tools and let him/her play with them using plain water. Show your preschooler dry measuring tools and let him/her play with them using flour, or if outdoors, sand.
How do we tell how much something weighs? This is another area of measurement that your preschooler should learn about to prepare for kindergarten. Let your preschooler weigh produce at the grocery store. Make it a fun activity. Don’t rush it! Put more fruit on the scale than you want. Take your time removing fruit, until you’ve reached your goal weight. Discuss the process with your child. Weigh your child at home. Weigh him/her dressed and undressed. Does the weight change? Why? What reason can your preschooler think up on his/her own?
As with anything else, your attitude and approach will greatly effect how successful your preschooler is in learning about measurement. As his/her parent, you are his/her most important teacher and role model. Your child will want to “measure up” to the standards that you set!
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