This week our activities were about units of measurement — an adventure full of measuring, weighing and discovery.
The children got to work with their hands and learned about length, about weight and about other quantities, using real instruments and interactive games. They measured the length of objects with a ruler and used scales to understand weight. And the difference between reading about a unit and using one shows at once: "a metre" stays an abstraction until a child stretches the tape across the floor and sees exactly how much it is.
The most useful thing a week like this brings is the habit of comparison. The children explored different objects and understood how we can measure and compare the things around us. That is how estimation gradually appears — the skill of saying roughly how big something is before measuring it. It is exactly what will later protect them from absurd answers in problems: a child with a sense of how much a school bag weighs will never write that it weighs two hundred kilograms.
Alongside the hands-on work, the children enjoyed games and puzzles about units of measurement, which challenged them to consolidate what they knew in an interactive way. With every correct answer they felt more confident and understood better what measurement is for in daily life — when shopping, when cooking, in any construction, even one made of cardboard.
Each of them, in turn, was a small expert.