One simple craft for younger children is to have the child measure out one meter of yarn. On a large piece of paper have the child create a continuous design without cutting the yarn. Ideas you may want to share would be a tree, a flower, a house or their name. This one-meter picture could be used to help reinforce cursive writing skills by having children create their name using only one meter of yarn. Once the design is created on the paper, use glue to keep the yarn in place. For comparison, you could have the child measure out one yard of yarn, in addition to the one meter of yarn. Then attempt to create the same picture with each of the two different lengths of yarn. This allows the child to see what one meter looks like against a more familiar one yard, or vice versa.
Having a child measure out out grids is another way to let her practice measurement skills. By creating a grid such as a calendar or a coordinate grid, the child can practice division skills as well. If the overall grid is to be 25 cm x 35 cm for a calendar, say, then the child must divide 25 by 5 to find out how tall each row should be. The child would then divide 35 by 7 for the width of each column. From here the child can then measure out individual squares to fit into the boxes created to label as dates on the calendar. The child would write the days of the week above each column and then measure and cut out 12 1.5 cm x 7.5 cm strips of paper or tag board to label with the months of the year. Small pieces of Velcro can be used to adhere the date and month labels to the grid on the larger piece of paper with the grid.
Coordinate grids can also be used to enlarge simple pictures by drawing a grid on a small picture. The simpler the picture, the better, as more complicated pictures may be hard to translate to a larger grid for beginners. Have the child measure the width and length of the picture in centimeters. Divide both measurements evenly so that squares can be drawn on the picture. On a larger sheet of paper, have the child draw a corresponding grid with the lines two or three times further apart than on the original grid. For instance, a 2 cm x 2 cm square on the original grid will be a 4 cm x 4 cm or 6 cm x 6 cm square on the larger grid. Have the child label each row on both grids as A, B, C, D and so on and the columns of each grid as 1, 2, 3 and so on. Finally, have the child draw the portion of the picture in A1 of the smaller grid into the same position of A1 on the larger grid, and continue to do this for each square in the grids.
Using a roll of adding machine tape, have children measure out 36 cm for each year they have been alive. (This craft can also be used for looking at a timeline of events during a major historical period such as the Renaissance or the Civil War.) Once the child has labeled each year, have him mark off 3 cm for each month of each year. Label each of these marks with the month. Starting with the first year, have the child draw an arrow to the month he was born and draw a picture of a baby. Add other events in the same way. Some possible events to add would be the first day of kindergarten, the birth of a sibling or the acquisition of a pet. Important world events such as the election of a new president or the collapse of a country can also be added to the timeline.
Games use all sorts of metric measurements in their creation. The grids created for the enlargement craft above can also be used to create a checkers set or a Nigerian Dara board. Several games from around the world start with a simple 20-cm square board. The differences in the boards come in how they are divided.
Creating jewelry using metric measurements can also be a fun craft. Yarn or string bracelets often use different lengths to create different designs. Simple cuff bracelets are made by measuring specific lengths of material and then fastening them with buttons, Velcro or snaps.
Quilts use metric measurements to achieve intricate designs and patterns. Each quilt is divided into a grid and each square contains a specific part of the pattern.