Metric Hugs

How many students would it take to give your school a metric hug? Work together to measure the building’s perimeter and then create paper dolls---to scale---to represent a hug that embraces your learning place!

• 1.

  How many classmates would it take to reach all the way around your school building to give it a hug? With an adult, take a quick walk around the building to see how large it is. Use Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencils to record your estimates on paper.

• 2.

  Perimeter is the measured length of the outer edge around an object or an area. Brainstorm ideas for measuring the perimeter around your school building. What tools could you use to find the measurement in metric units? How could you divide the task so everyone in your group can participate? Are there any edges that may be hard to measure because you don't have access to them? Make a plan to measure your school’s perimeter. Gather the materials and work together to get the metric measurement.

• 3.

  Now it's time to measure hugs! Use a meter stick to measure the armspan (arms stretched out to the sides) of each student in your class. Can most students reach at least a meter? How many meters long is the perimeter of your school? If each hug can be about 1 meter long, how many hugs would you need to go around your school? Look back at your estimates. Erase and replace your estimates with the measurements!

• 4.

  Create paper dolls to represent each hugging student. To save paper, do it to scale, rather than lifesize! One way to create the dolls is to draw 10 cm horizontal lines on paper for arm spans. This line can stand for the 1-meter armspan hug. How does 10 cm compare to 1 meter? Your smaller representation of the hug is 1/100th the size of the real thing!

• 5.

  Use Crayola Washable Markers and Multicultural Markers to draw yourself with your arms stretched out along the horizontal 10 cm line. Use Crayola Scissors to cut out your paper doll. Work with your classmates to draw and cut out enough paper dolls to make a hug around the building. Make each doll unique, just like the students in your school.

• 6.

  Display your dolls, connected hand-to-hand with tape, in a continuous line in your school. Create a few signs to post along the line of hugs so others know what they stand for!

Standards

• LA: Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.
• LA: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
• LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace
• MATH: Know relative sizes of measurement units within one system of units including km, m, cm; kg, g; lb, oz.; l, ml; hr, min, sec. Within a single system of measurement, express measurements in a larger unit in terms of a smaller unit.
• MATH: Use the four operations to solve word problems involving distances, intervals of time, liquid volumes, masses of objects, and money, including problems involving simple fractions or decimals, and problems that require expressing measurements given in a larger unit in terms of a smaller unit. Represent measurement quantities using diagrams such as number line diagrams that feature a measurement scale.
• VA: Use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.
• VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

Adaptations

• Organize a walk around the school for students. Using graph paper, students chart and estimate the size of their school building. Take a second walk around the school building. This trip, students count the number of toe-to-toe steps necessary to make one complete trip around the building. Some students will arrive at a slightly different number of steps. Collect data and have students find the mean number of steps necessary to make one complete trip around the school building.
• Students find the mean arm span using data of arm spans collected from all students in the class. Traveling to the playground, students encircle a baseball diamond. How many students are needed to completely circle the field? Re-calculate using the mean arm span.
• Measure the arm span of all students in the class. Find the mean arm span for the class. Using this information, have students create a "ring" around the school and estimate the number of students needed to completely encircle the building. If all students in the school can participate, collect data on arm spans and calculate the average arm span for students prior to encircling the building.