~Our homeschool this week and teaching liquid measurement~

This week was quite a different week in our homeschool.  For one, Baby Boy has not been feeling well and has been in need of my attention a little more than normal.  And two, I declared Thursday and Friday as teacher work days.  Sometimes the teacher needs time to catch up, you know. ;0)

So I don’t have much to show for our school this week.  Even so, I am a believer that learning takes place even without a school book  in front of your nose.  And sometimes that learning is more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic.  But that’s another post…

So I am mainly going to share one of Flower Girl’s lessons.  This week she was learning about liquid measurement.  So I pulled out one of my all time favorite things:

mason jars!

We used a measuring cup, a pint jar, a quart jar, and a gallon pitcher.  She transferred water from the cup to the pint jar and added water as necessary.  She did this for all of the containers and noted how many it took to fill it up.  However, it is hard to remember how many cups in a pint, how many pints in a quart, etc.  So I made this visual aid to help her out.

Using four pieces of different colored cardstock, I labeled them:

a whole sheet ~ 1 gallon

a sheet divided  into fourths ~ quart in each block

a sheet divided into eighths ~ pint in each block

a sheet divided into sixteenths ~ cup in each block

I cut each sheet apart and left the gallon sheet in tact.

And this is how Flower Girl used it:

 She needed to know that 1 gallon = 4 quarts.  (In the picture, she has only placed two quarts down.)

She also needed to know that 1 quart = 2 pints.  But you could also do 2 quarts = 4 pints and 3 quarts = 6 pints, etc. 

Shown here is 1 pint = 2 cups.  But this can also show that  2 pints = 4 cups, 3 pints = 6 cups, etc.

(Is it clear as mud?  I can’t seem to explain it very well.  But it really did help her.)

I don’t have pictures of this because Flower Girl did not have to focus on this, but the visual aid could also show you:

1 gallon = 8 pints

Just lay the pint cards on the gallon card

or

1 gallon = 16 cups

There are so many ways to use it!

  We also started some fun science lessons but I’ll wait and share that next week!