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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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 Theme Activities from the PLAYful Preschool Education Team:
Learning Letter Sounds on Alphabet Road by Mom Inspired Life
Wind Powered Boat Eggsperiment by Capri + 3
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 more science, math, and engineering!
Yup, on my list for today. We still have out all our toy cars.
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. 🙂
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.
Such a great way to explore weight by using an item that most kids love! Cars!
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.