My kids love playing with cars. Over the years we have slowly amassed quite a few from garage saleing and hand-me-downs. We love to put them in a line, count them, sort them by color and zoom them around the floor.
Today though, I have challenged the kids to find out:
How many cars equals 1 pound.
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Measuring Vehicles Weight Challenge
MATH Learning Objective: Using standard units of measurement to determine weight.
Estimated Activity Time: 20 Minutes
Vocabulary: Weight, Pound, Scale
Materials Needed:
Directions for Measuring the Vehicles Weight:
1. Introduce the child to how a scale works. Practice measuring one or two cars.
2. Introduce the 1 pound challenge. Have them make a prediction of how many vehicles they think it will take to make 1 pound.
3. Encourage them to find out how many vehicles it will take to make 1 pound on the scale.
4. Write down the final number of cars used on a piece of paper. This introduces young children to recording data.
5. Repeat the experiment again. See if a different combination of cars will produce a different result. If you have a variety of cars, weigh those too and compare.
For more transportation activities, take a look at these ideas on our site...
Alphabet Car Activity: Outdoor Letter Fun
Color Car Sort: Outdoor Math Fun
Transportation Theme Activities from the PLAYful Preschool Education Team:
- Learning Letter Sounds on Alphabet Road by Mom Inspired Life
- Alphabet Activities: Transportation Letter Maze by Growing Book by Book
- Gross Motor Transportation Game for Preschoolers by Life Over C’s
- Sorting Transportation Vehicles by Still Playing School
- Make a Truck from Shapes by Powerful Mothering
- How Many in One Pound by The Educators’ Spin On It
- Cotton Reel Car by Rainy Day Mum
To extend your vehicle play and learning, consider adding in a store-bought or home-made ramp. This will encourage even more science, math, and engineering!
Cerys Parker says
Love this and as my eldest and youngest are both doing weighing in preschool and grade 1 we will be doing this at the weekend.
Kim Staten says
Such a great way to explore weight by using an item that most kids love! Cars!
Danielle Buckley says
Great idea, Amanda! We often measure things by length, but rarely by weight. This is a fun way to explore how much things weigh. It would also be neat to compare the weight of other toys to the weight of the pound of cars.
Growing Book by Book says
What a neat way to explore measurement with kids. Now, I can start telling them they can only take a pound of cars with them them when we go somewhere. 🙂
Natasha Johnson says
Yup, on my list for today. We still have out all our toy cars.