It's all about measurement and more

To begin the week we brainstormed together 'What do we think measurement is?' The children came up with ideas like:

• it's doing something - Sohyun
• we measure things because we want to know how long it is - Bella
• to see if we eat a lot or a little bit - Shayaan
• we measure to see how tall a house is - Lang Lang
• we measure because we need know how tall you are - Ivy
• we can measure people - Chinsiv
• we do it to find something out - Mathilda
• bananas - Hifumi, then Mathilda added: to see how light or heavy :)

We all have a good idea about measurement already!

During the rest of the week, we went about exploring what these ideas might look like and extending our knowledge while learning the mathematical language to describe our thinking.

We measured using 'Time' -  We counted how many times we could run and jump in 30 seconds and how many times in 1 minute. 

We used our knowledge of numbers to record our findings.

We also practiced forming the letters we have learned correctly and counted how many we could write in that same time. 

We explored volume with water and learned more about full and empty.

We used scales and talked about heavy and light. To do this, we had fun with an orange. First we weighed the orange and we predicted how many cubes it would be. We soon discovered it was so many we couldn't fit more into the scale bowl and had to rethink how to solve the problem. Mathilda suggested that we needed to use something "more heavy" than the cubes and we decided to use the plastic horses. 

I asked the children if they could think of a way to change the weight of the orange. After some thinking, they agreed that removing the skin would make the weight change, but we were of mixed opinions on what that change might look like. 

Finally, we peeled the orange to see what would really happen. 

... And we checked. 

We found out that if the skin is off it was lighter on the scale. BUT...

Floating and sinking

... We viewed a short video about a buoyancy which included an orange and we wanted to test it ourselves. We paused the video and predicted what would happen to the orange. Would it sink? or float? All but two students thought it would sink because it was so heavy. Our experiment soon showed us whether our prediction was correct or not. 

The orange floated and it sank when it was peeled. From the remainder of the video, we learned that there is air trapped in the peel of the orange that makes it float. Without the skin, the orange is heavier in water and sinks. 

Now we are wondering - Why is the orange LIGHTER on a scale without skin, but HEAVIER in water without skin? that's too strange :)