Measurement Olympics with 5th grade Science!

 In our current unit, students are learning how to measure distance with customary and metric units, the difference between weight and mass, how to calculate area and volume and density. To practice their recent learning, they have been engaging in Measurement Olympics last week and will continue into this coming week. 

Their first activity was four different distance events where students did shuttle sprints and timed each other. They practiced their long jumps and had to measure how far they jumped. They blew a q-tip out of a straw and measured how far it flew. The fourth activity was the discus event where they threw a paper plate and measured the distance from the starting line to where it landed. For some of the activities, students had to measure in meters and yards which took some time. The activities were fun and engaging and students enjoyed being outside in the sunshine! 

For our second activity, we have the area and volume event! Each student (we have partners for these activities) made their own little boat and blew it across a tub full of water. Afterwards, we worked together to measure the length and width to calculate the area. Then we measured the height and calculated our volume. I had fun taking pics of my students blowing their boats across the tub of water. :)

Our last activity in the Measurement Olympics has to do with food which gets everyone's attention! Each partner group will have a graduated cylinder to measure the volume of each ingredient (there are 5). They have to have some of each ingredient. They then measure the mass on a metric scale for each ingredient then add up the total volume and mass for their snack mix. I have also made some lemonaide where they will measure the temperature, add ice and measure the temperature again. As they compare their results with other partner groups, they can eat their snacks. We will be doing this last activity this week and I will attempt to get the pictures added afterwards. :)