Spending time outside is one of our favourite things to do as a family. Although it can sometimes require a bit of motivation, everyone one of us is just HAPPIER and more RELAXED when we’re surrounded by nature, regardless of the weather. That’s not to say that tantrums and huffs don’t happen. Of course they do; that’s normal. I do think the source of many tantrums and huffs are removed though when we’re outside – screen time, being territorial over toys or endlessly asking for snacks because they’re bored.
I thought it might be fun to document some of the activities that we get up to/plan for our little ones so here’s the first in (hopefully!) a series of posts about fun outdoor learning.
This is one of the simplest things we do in the garden or when we’re out and about for our numeracy-loving little ones. It has been a favourite ever since my son was little(r).
When we’re in our garden, we draw numerous items on the patio in chalk: the raised beds, the fairy house, the plants, the trampoline, our small apple trees… and we use the measuring tape to check the length, width or circumference of each. There’s good comedy value in the process of trying to work out what the drawings actually represent! Then at the end we decide on which was the biggest, smallest, jaggiest etc. I’m no maths teacher but I do think that this is beneficial for giving them a sense of basic geometry, handling numbers, organising objects by size, shapes etc. It also gives them a bit of independence to select which items they want to measure and in which order (with the bonus of keeping them busy for ages!).
When we’re out and about, they have more freedom to measure what they want with a little helping hand from me to get them started.
My little girl is 3 so really it’s just about her starting to become aware of measurement and to be able to talk about and recognise numbers. We also chat about which numbers are higher or lower and use this as an excuse to count to 10/20/30. If we take our little nature journals with us, she writes her ‘measurements’ in her journal… but really she’s just practising mark making so I praise whatever she writes even if it’s not actually a number!
My little boy is a bit older – he’s 6 – so he has a greater understanding of geometry and numeracy in general. When we’re measuring, we talk about whether we’re measuring in inches, centimetres or millimetres. I also encourage him to rank the items we’ve measured from biggest to smallest and we use our ‘data’ to make estimates about the size of other things we see. I also challenge him to find things that are particularly big or small and he takes great delight in proving me wrong if I say e.g. “I’m sure there are no daisies longer than 2cm in this field!” Again, if we have our nature journals with us, he’ll keep a note of some of the measurements. Having said that, I would never force him to write it if he wasn’t keen because this little task is all about him having fun with numbers!
I hope you enjoy this little activity with your little ones. You don’t need anything for this – a tape measure is handy (Kids Measuring Tape – this is the one we bought in 2019 and it’s still going strong affiliated link) but really, you could even just use a length of string or a stick and create your own units of measurement!
