Friday 29 February 2008

Measuring, measuring and more measuring ...

Well it's caused a bit of controversy here at Boyce View about the measuring - imperial versus metric. I stick by my stand that we still use both in this country but dh says metric, so obviously I followed up 20 minutes later by innocently asking how many kilometers from A to B, to which he replied 'what? You mean miles' - Ha, gottcha!

Still looking at it from a Waldorf perspective, the block is about relating measurement to the body and looking at how measurement has come to be. It includes lots of measuring actual things using body parts!! Mainly though, it gives an actual understanding of what measuring is. We couldn't have done this with metric because it just doesn't relate to anything. So anyway we carried on - with imperial, and Hettie understands we have metric as well.

We took measures of 12 actual feet (thanks to the home ed group) and found an average to make a ruler of Our Standard Foot.

Hettie used her actual foot, our standard foot and the actual 'real' standard foot to measure various things.

Today we had a look at the span and measured more things with our hands.

I've been working hard at trying to find our rhythm. We're getting there now, to the point where Hettie says we haven't done this or that yet! So we start the day with mental maths, at the moment times tables and ball throwing. Although today we started with 15 minutes or so of piano practice because Hettie had her first lesson yesterday. Then we followed up with a tongue twister which involved a lot of laughing! A little bit of activity - all of this is standing up - seems to set her up for more 'concentration' work.

Hettie working out 3 times tables, multiplication & division.

5 comments:

dawn klinge said...

You just seem so organized. I love reading about how you do school and seeing your lesson books. Have a great weekend.

Mrs. Darling said...

Here in the US things are still measured almost exclusively by inches and feet. Most of us have no idea how to convert to metric. I guess thats not entirely true since a lot of the mens tools are in metric but for us women, forget it!

Tammy said...

What a wonderful way to teach this lesson block! GREAT JOB!

Lima said...

You are right, this country is both metric and imperial. The battle to retain imperial measurements was won last year by a group of traders.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/may/09/humanrights.eu

All the work looks brilliant, well done to Hettie for putting so much effort in.

Lxx

Ruth said...

Brilliant :) I use imperial but dh who is a joiner measures everything in mm- drives me up the wall:)