This video from our Focus on the Lesson series demonstrates an activity for teaching capacity in kindergarten and preschool. Students look at two containers and try to determine which one would hold more liquid.
One of the goals from this lesson is to get young students thinking about precise ways to describe their thinking. Many children use general terms—“it’s big!”— when explaining their ideas about measurement. This activity requires children to use more specific words and concepts to clearly explain their thoughts. While one container might be taller, the other might be wider.
Because it reinforces strong, precise vocabulary, Which Holds More? is a great activity for teaching capacity to English Language Learners.
“The language of capacity is difficult for any child but especially English Language Learners,” explains one of the teachers featured in this video. Students are able to practice using these new words, but the concrete objects in the lesson still allow them to fall back to using gesture to communicate their ideas.
Students compare the size of their hands to objects around the classroom to find ones that are “just right.”
Originally published February 15, 2013
We find that one sure fire way to warm up children’s attitude towards mathematics is to build math activities and lessons out of the books they all love to read.
When we start to sort through books that could be used in this way, three categories emerge.
One is the concept book, which is all those books specifically about shapes and counting and other mathematical concerns. Though they may belong to the same category, there are different types. For example, counting concept books can involve straightforward counting of items; that’s what happens in Sandra Boynton’s Doggies. In others, the counting occurs in the context of a story. Hippos Go Berserk is another Sandra Boynton book that uses this approach. In still other cases, the counting is part of a song or finger play such as 5 Little Monkeys.
A second category of books good for math may look like typical picture books or stories, but these books all have a mathematical problem situation built right into them. This is so that it is easy to mathematize them, using the story to trigger a mathematical discussion or activity. One of our favorites in this regard is Pat Hutchins’ The Doorbell Rang, a delicious tale where young readers get to do real-time “fair share” division as a group of kids, all hoping to share Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies, grows until everyone is left with just one cookie.
Finally, there are all kinds of wonderful stories that aren’t specifically mathematical but can be extended to develop understanding of mathematical Big Ideas. We have begun our learning labs about algebraic thinking by having the teachers list all the sets and patterns they can find in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They report later on all the ways they could tailor this activity for use in their classrooms. In the Cinderella variation called The Talking Eggs by Robert San Souci, ornery students may like to make up story problems about how many treasures or nasty creatures came out of the eggs to reward or punish the kind and the mean daughter.
New Content Updated 9/26/24 Use this printable guide to help you analyze books and highlight their mathematical opportunities.
Students roll a die and mimic animal movements to connect counting words, visual number arrangements, and actions.
Teachers encourage children to describe the pattern in a favorite story book.
In this geometry activity for pre-k and kindergarten, students distinguish shapes using touch rather than sight.