Have students use a simple primary school balance scale. Give each small group of students a jar of plastic counting teddy bears. Have the students place a portion of the counting bears on one side of the balance scale, and then ask them to hypothesize what they will need to put on the other side to make the scale balanced. Teach students how to adjust the scales and read the measurements.
Fill a jar with a large quantity of gummy bears or Teddy Grahams. Have students guess how many of the snacks are in the jar. To help them to gain application skills and build their estimating accuracy, show them an identical jar with 10, 20 and 50 of the snacks before they guess.
Invite your young students to bring their favorite teddy bear to school. In groups of two, have them measure the bears and write down the measurements. They can use rulers, yardsticks or stacks of 1-inch counting cubes to obtain the measurements. Then have them create a graph with the results of how tall the various bears are. This will let them practice both their measuring and recording skills as well as give them exposure to graphing.
On the day your students bring teddy bears to school, have them identify the type of bear that they brought in. Their bears might be pandas, brown bears, koalas or just plain teddy bears. Graph the results of the different bears. Use the categories of bears as part of a unit on mammals and their characteristics or just as a lesson to understand classifying.