I’ve written before about taking a child’s passion and using it as a way to explore different areas of play and learning. Here’s an idea for mixing in some maths – which we’re doing through the medium of Lego, but you can adapt it to suit whatever your child is interested in, be it cars, dinosaurs or shells.
Measuring with Lego
- Gather your investigation equipment: clipboard, pencil and some Lego
- Select your experiment: what would you like to measure? The size of everyone’s feet? The height of your sunflowers? The length of your dinosaurs?
- Make an estimate: how many Lego blocks would it take to measure your foot? Mummy’s foot? Daddy’s foot? Let your child record their guesses on their clipboard. A group of children can interview each other and record everyone’s estimates to see who comes closest.
- Get measuring: counting out in Lego bricks is great for fine motor skills, numbers and for having a visual representation children can see and compare. Make a tower as long as each child’s foot (or whatever you are measuring) – you could add a sticker so you know which tower belongs to each person. Then you can order the towers in ascending or descending order, and even transfer this to a bar chart graph if you want to.
- Compare your results: compare your lego towers with your estimates and see how well you did.
- Let your explorers loose: hand over the Lego and see what else they can measure.
happily shared with abcand123 and math Monday and tot school and Link and Learn and preschool corner and For the kids Friday
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This is brilliant! Thank you, sometimes it just takes someone else with a bright idea to share it and make everyone’s life better!
I am not that creative with Lego, but I am an accountant by trade so this is another perfect way to interact with my boys!!!
Love IT!
Hi Kirsty. I’m delighted this works for you – hope you and the boys have some fun with it!
You could really have some fun with this! For measuring shelves and even the children you could use those big lego type blocks! You got me thinking:)
Great idea Deborah – I think the kids would love making towers as big as themselves.
My daughter loves to use measuring tape and building blocks. This will be a great activity to do with her. Thanks for sharing!
Glad you like the idea Esther.
What a wonderful idea! You could even use it to practice multiplication and addition as children grow older =)
Great idea maryanne – I love how when one of us has a suggestions everyone else spins it in all different ways
I really liked this math play idea! If you want to, you should post it on It’s Playtime. http://messypreschoolers.blogspot.com/2011/04/its-playtime.html
Thanks for the invitation Rachele.
This is a wonderful idea, cant wait to try it with putti !!
Thanks for sharing..
Thanks Roopa – and lovely to link up with you on Twitter today too.
Tip top idea – I like it!
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Simon – and thanks for sharing it on Twitter too.
I’m all about learning with Legos, though I have to admit we mainly use them for reenacting stories from History and the Bible.
Lego is great for so many areas of learning through play! Mine do a lot of floating and sinking experiments with theirs. designing boats and filling the sink with water! Trying them out and adjusting the designs to make them more “sea worthy!”
Pip, that’s a fab idea!
This is perfect for young children!
Thanks min – great to link up with Math Monday
So glad to see you at Math Monday!
Cindy
Hi Cindy – I think we have a new Mth Monday location over at yours now? On my way over to link up
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