Teach Maths / Simple Weighing Activities

What does a kilogram feel like?

Here are a few great introductory activities to allow your students to gain an understanding of mass.

Set up the balance scales and challenge them to find items which are equivalent to one kilogram.

Provide groups of everyday items, such as fruit, vegetables or toys, and have students estimate and then weigh each object.

Play ‘Guess the Weight’ with items around the classroom. Hold up an object and allow students to feel its weight and write down their estimate. Then weigh the object and the person with the closest estimate wins! After a number of rounds, ask whose estimates are becoming more accurate and share their strategies with the group.

Design a ‘Killer-gram’ monster – would it be plump and heavy? Discuss other units of measurement and brainstorm how to portray these monsters…a long and skinny ‘Killer-metre’, a blurred and tiny millisecond…