Grades 4-6: Water!
| Drink it, swim in it,
run through it, sail away on it. There is nothing like water to transport us - from
hot to cool, heavy to light, bogged down to buoyant. I swim most every day, year round. In the winter, we're disciplined lap-swimmers, but in summer, the shrieks of children echo through our lanes, and it's a splendid sound. There are many ways to explore some mathematics while splashing in the water. Adapt the following ideas to fit you and your child. . |
|||
|
1. Volume -- Volume is a measure of contents, and
children can get a feel for how volume works, simply standing in a pool or tub or lake and
playing with water and a variety of containers. Save empty containers, and save the
labels that tell the volume of the contents inside. Let them pour water from one
container to another, and see if the volume changes when the shape changes. |
||
| 2. In international tests, American students have a weak sense of measurement. Parents can do a lot to help them get a better feel for measurement, quantities, and units. Show them the units that sizes are measured in - and expose them to both the metric and the English units. Playing with containers in water, they can soon get a feel for quarts and gallons and liters and cubic centimeters. Ask them to estimate the volume a container will hold, and then check it by pouring in a known quantity of water. Buy some inexpensive measuring cups and let them learn to use the measurements marked on the side. They will love it, and it will build their "sense" of quantities - so important, and so much more difficult to do in a classroom. | 3. Ask questions, wondering questions that let them experiment to find the answers - "I wonder how much this container will hold." "If that is one liter, will it fit into this one liter bottle, even though it's a different size?" | ||
4. Let them experiment with measuring exact quantities of liquid. For example, in a big bucket of water, let them estimate how many liters or gallons are in it, and then let them experiment to find a way to measure it with the tools at hand. |
|
||
6. There are many other things you can measure in and around the water: keep a temperature chart, either day to day, or hour by hour. Kids love using thermometers, and keeping records. Show them how to turn the records into graphs. |
7. Flow - let them experiment with rates of flow - how long does it take to fill a bucket or a wading pool at different rates? They can set up some fun experiments, and you can ask some questions that get them figuring. You can also help them see how math can give them some answers. | ||
