Mega Measurements

This week, we took our measuring to a whole new level! We went outside Wednesday afternoon to measure our FIELD!

We began the process of measuring the field by attaching a piece of string to the fence by the playground. Afterwards, each of the giraffes took turns unraveling the string as we walked across towards the trees on the other side. Once we reached the trees, we cut the string and then cut our giant string into smaller pieces for each of the giraffes to measure in the classroom.

Once we got inside, we lined up the top of our strings with the top of a ruler and wrapped the string around, counting two feet for every full loop around. If  our string wasn't exactly a certain length, we rounded up or down to the nearest foot. After we measured our strings, we added our lengths together with the lengths of our table mates. 

Once every table added their measurements together, we worked together as a class to add those numbers together. We looked at the ones place first and looked for doubles facts and tens facts that would help us add all of those numbers together. Once we carried over to the tens place, we did the same. 

We discovered that our field is about 305 ft long from the fence to the trees, which is 5 ft. longer than a football field! We had fun combining our measuring skills with our adding skills to get the job done :)

Mystery Skype With Our GRA Buddies!

All week long, we've been keeping track of all the silly words we've been hearing The BFG says as well as checking in with our friends on Twitter. On Friday, we did some BFG math and we also got to skype with some of our Global Read Aloud Buddies! 

This week, we learned that the BFG is 24 ft. tall, and the other giants are an average of 54 ft. tall. We used our number grid strategies to figure out that the other giants are an average of 30 ft. taller than the BFG! We also learned that the average second grader is about 4 ft. tall, so we went out into the hallway to measure out how tall the BFG is, and then we figured out how much taller he would be than a second grader as well as how many second graders it would take to reach his height:

We discovered the BFG was 20 ft taller than the average second grader, and we also discovered it would take about 6 second graders to equal his height! (and that it would only take 4 Ms. Rileys :)

Afterwards, we got to do a Mystery Skype with our Global Read Aloud Buddies! We received their package and they received ours, and each of us got to ask the other class 5 questions to try and figure out which state they were from before opening up our community boxes. These were the questions we came up with:

• Are you in the north or the south?
• Are you in the east or the west?
• Is it always warm where you are or does it snow?
• Does your state touch the ocean?
• What letter does your state start with?

After hearing their answers, we were able to figure out they were in........TEXAS!!!! They guessed we were in New York, which was very close! 

Once we knew where our buddies were from, we opened their package to find all of the things that represented their community: a Texas state flag, a mini ten-gallon hat, a Texas Blue Bonnet, and a homecoming badge for their homecoming celebration this week!

After opening our packages, we talked with our buddies about The BFG and asked each other some questions about the book. It was so cool to chat with them from all the way across the country! 

...and Fluffy Jr. is LOVING the hat :)

Great Estimations

This week, we took our measuring skills outside to complete our biggest measuring challenge yet--the FIELD!

We tied a piece of yarn to the fence beside the playground. Before taking our yarn across the field, we estimated in yards how long we thought the field might be. Our estimations ranged from 51 yards to 1,100 yards, but many of us estimated it would be around 100-150 yards. 

We each took turns pulling the yarn across the field while the rest of us followed and frolicked in the beautiful spring weather 

When we finally reached the other side, we cut the yarn from the yarn ball and then cut our giant piece of yarn into smaller pieces that each of us took back to the classroom and measured. 

Once we measured our pieces of yarn in feet, we added the lengths of our yarn pieces to the lengths measured by our table mates, and afterwards we added those 5 numbers together for a grand total of 414 ft!

Since we know 100 yards= 300 feet, we knew many of our estimations were not too far off! We even did some dividing (watch out, 3rd and 4th grade!) and discovered the field was about 138 yards! And now, we are left wondering why the New England Patriots don't use our field to practice-- we would like to let them know they have an open invitation :)

Measuring Madness!

We began to really dive into measuring this week, as we started to make all sorts of measurements! 

We began by making  a list of personal references that we could look to when estimating different lengths. We worked with our table groups to find objects around our classroom that were about 1 inch,  1 foot, 1 yard, 1 centimeter, 1 decimeter, or 1 meter. While we discovered inch and foot-long objects were slightly larger than objects that were 1 centimeter or 1 decimeter, objects that were 1 yard long were slightly shorter than objects that were 1 centimeter. We used rulers and meter sticks to do our measuring. 

1 inch =2.54 centimeters

12 inches= 1 foot

10 centimeters=1 decimeter

12 inches= 3 feet= 1 yard

100 centimeters= 10 decimeters= 1 meter

we even used our place value knowledge to figure out that one kilometer equals 100,000 centimeters!

Later in the week, we did some measuring on ourselves using measuring tapes. We measured our heights, the lengths of our legs, arms, and hands, the circumference around our heads, and more! 

On Friday, we did some estimating using our new measuring knowledge. We worked with a partner and decided on three distances we would measure within our classroom. After we made our estimations, we measured the distances in yards using our measuring tapes. 

We will continue to do some measuring next week with our fairy tale characters as we prepare for the Wax Museum! 

Measuring Medley!

At school and in our homework packets, we've begun to do a lot of practice with measuring. Ms. Riley shared with us the tale of the King's Foot and why we need to use standard units of measurement in order to measure things accurately! We also talked about how in the U.S we measure in inches, feet, yards, and miles. 

We worked in partners to practice measuring things in feet using rulers. We measured all sorts of items from around our classroom! 

Next week, we are going to put all of our measuring skills to use with a super special project! We can't wait to get started :)