Head O’ Meadow First Graders

Celebrate Measuring

By Eliza Hallabeck

The three first grade classrooms at Head O’ Meadow Elementary School were busy on Friday, December 10, measuring.

The first graders learned about area by measuring how many Cheerios it takes to fill a line drawing of their own hand; they learned about capacity by measuring how many grains of rice it takes to fill different objects; and they learned about balance by using a scale to measure weight.

“These are concepts that first graders area ready to think about,” said Head O’ Meadow math/science specialist Gail Maletz, as she walked between the three different classrooms.

This year marked the 13th Measurement Morning to be held at the school, and over the course of those 13 years, Ms Maletz estimated roughly 65,000 Cheerios have been used to measure the area of students’ hands. The average size of a traced first grader’s hand is 50 Cheerios, according to Ms Maletz.

The measuring activities, Ms Maletz said, are designed to be real-life experiments students can relate to. “How can this not be fun?” she said.

Students expressed enjoyment while running their hands through grains of rice, and listened closely while first grade teacher Barbara Beckerle explained the project the students were about to complete. Students counted how many cups of rice it took to fill a pitcher, and made estimates.

“At the very end,” said Ms Beckerle, “you are going to write, ‘the pitcher holds…’ then tell me how many cups of rice it holds.”

Parents and other volunteers helped during the day to monitor the work at each station.

“For us,” said Ms Maletz, “one of the best parts is having the parents so involved.”