A measurement scavenger can focus on any form of measurement that your students need to practice and strengthen children's senses of relative sizes and distances. Introduce the measurements that the children will need to look for in the hunt. For instance, have them draw lines, make paper strips of different lengths or experiment with the capacity of different containers using measuring spoons and cups. Identify items in the classroom that correspond to the target measurements and have them practice estimating the measurement. Let them measure the objects and see how close their guesses were. Cap the lesson by giving them a list of measurements and sending them out in teams to find objects that approximate each measurement. They should estimate the measurement of each object they collect. When everyone returns to the classroom, have the team measure their objects and determine how close their estimates come to the actual measurement.
A child's own body is a measurement lesson by itself. Children love to see how much they are growing, so take advantage of this natural interest by having them estimate each other's height, head and wrist circumference, foot and hand size, and arm length. Let them take the actual measurements and record the results for each child. Give the child measurement estimation challenges based on their body measurements. For example, estimate the perimeter of a table using the child's hand as the standard of measure. Have them check the hand measurement and convert that to an actual measurement by multiplying the number of hands times the measurement of one hand or counting by the number of inches of one hand.
Edible lessons offer the incentive of a delicious treat at the end of the work. Line up various plastic or glass containers of varying shapes and sizes. Have students arrange them by their estimate of least capacity to most capacity. Use full measuring cups to fill each container as close to capacity as possible without spilling over and label approximately how many cups fit in each one. Make one set of pancakes or cookies using the approximate measurements and another using exact measures using with measuring cups and spoons. Compare the difference in the results and discuss when it is OK to estimate and when an exact measurementa works better.
Hold a track and field measurement Olympics to get kids moving while they learn to estimate the distance of their long jumps, high jumps, shot puts, broom tosses and distance kicks. Have the children measure the distance of one long step and mark out a distance scale in steps along one side of each competition area, noting which child's step measurement was used for each. Have children rotate through each event taking turns competing until everyone has had a chance at every station, recording their best measurement at each event. Convert each step measurement to actual measurement by multiplying the step length times the jump, toss or kick distance in steps.