Units of Length Scavenger Hunts

Two days in a row...this has to be a miracle!!! I promised you a freebie, and here I am delivering! 

We started a new unit on measurement yesterday and I must say I HATE this unit every year!!! It is always our districts lowest scoring area in 3rd grade and so I get a little intimidated. We decided to take more of an individual discovery approach this year in hopes that it would help the ideas stick a bit more. 

Yesterday I introduced the customary units of length with the story "King Inch and the Kingdom of Measure." The story introduces the customary units in a fun and relatable manner. (I have no idea where this story came from because I've scoured the internet to make sure I wasn't violating any copyright laws and couldn't find it, but it was on our schools resource drive and so I made it into a flipchart. If you happen to know where it came from, please let me know!) You can download it by clicking the image below.

** The file below is a flipchart file and you must have Activ Inspire Promethean software for you to be able to download it! **

After we read the story, I drew lines on the white board showing how long each unit really is and then gave an example of something that is about the same length as each unit. After I did this, I turned the kids loose with their scavenger hunt sheets to search for other items in the room that were about the same length. I have to say, I was SUPER impressed with the things they found! 

I repeated the same process for metric units today with the scavenger hunt and again, I was impressed with what they came up with! (Sidenote: We obviously did not do the hunt when it came to miles or kilometers. At the end of the lesson, we brainstormed things that could be measured in both units since they are so large.) It was definitely the hardest one!

Click the picture below to download the sheets I used for today and yesterday!

And because I'm feeling all SHARE-Y, I even took a video of them during the Metric Scavenger hunt today! 

To wrap up both days of customary and metric units of length, we put our charts side by side and discussed the similarities between things they found. According to South Carolina math standards, students have to know that 1 yard and 1 meter are about the same and 1 kilometer is about half of 1 mile. Soooo, we took the similarities from the charts and came to the conclusion that some of the things we found for meters and yards were the same! It was so exciting that they came to this all on their own!

YAY for measurement! HAHA

But, tomorrow is last day of the week with kids and I'm pretty excited about our four day weekend! I'm taking Friday (the teacher workday) as an exchange day, which means I don't have to go!!! WHOO HOO!  

Happy Friday tomorrow to me!