Sunday, November 16, 2014

Investigating Grams and Kilograms

This past week, in math, we have been learning about measurement. More specifically, we have been learning how to find the mass of items in grams and kilograms.

Grams and kilograms are new concepts to most third graders, and the only way to truly understand something that you have very little experience with (or none at all), is to spend some time working with it.

So that is what we did! We did a lot of hands on activities so we all had a good understanding of what exactly a gram is and what exactly a kilogram is.

Check out the video below that explains what we did.



*Note: You might notice that we are using both the words weight and mass. We did discuss the difference between weight and mass (Mass is the measure of how much matter is in an object, weight is a measure of how hard gravity is pulling on that object), but that is a discussion that will continue as we understand this concept better. The term mass was new to us!

 When we finished, we went on one more scavenger hunt. A Skitch Scavenger hunt!

Skitch is an app that allows us to annotate a photograph very easily.

The students went in the room and the hallway, took pictures of items, then used Skitch to tell me if the mass of that item would be found with grams or kilograms. Here are some of our Skitch Scavenger hunt pictures below!






We had a lot of fun investigating grams and kilograms. We would love to hear from you! Look around you. Do you see any items that you would use grams to find their mass? Or maybe some items that you might use kilograms instead? Comment below, we would love to hear what they are.


2 comments:

  1. I love your video. I'm home on our snow day and see a couple items close to me that I wonder if their mass is greater than one kilogram? My cup of tea and my chrome book, I would estimate each are about 800 grams, what do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Mrs. Brown,

    We have chrome books in the classroom, so we will check and see what the mass of a chrome is when we are back at school tomorrow!

    And you have given me a great idea of another way to practice using grams and kilograms. Third graders, be ready, we are going to be doing some more estimating with mass, and also capacity, and length, and lots more!

    ReplyDelete

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