Seeking Inventive Ways to Capture Change and Growth (continued)

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Keeping track of, recording, and measuring change can also be done in informal, inventive ways. For example, when children are observing seeds and bulbs grow into plants, they can be assisted in measuring the growth of the plant with a variety of tools, such as strips of paper or yarn or a tall stick. The tall strip of paper or stick can be placed next to the plant at dirt level and marked off and labeled with the height of the plant at that time. These markings can be labeled with the date and attached to a chart. Another way this can be done is by measuring the height of the plant with individual strips of paper, or yarn, cut to the height of the plant. In a week’s interval, the plant can be measured with a different strip of paper or piece of yarn. Cut to match the plant’s current height. Then place the new strip next to the first strip along the same baseline. This process can continue so that the seriated sequence of growth is recorded with strips of paper or yarn, forming a visual representation of the growth of the plant. This representation makes a pleasant visual display. To enhance this activity, photos can be taken to support the graphic display of growth.

Children can use a variety of familiar, nonstandard materials such as blocks or counters, crayons or markers, stickers or ink stampers to keep track of growth or to capture how big something is. It is the process of measuring with nonstandard tools that lays the foundation for using standardized units of measure to capture the “how much-ness” of things. As they become more experienced with using manipulatives for nonstandard measuring, they will begin to see the importance of lining up the units end to end and of becoming more precise in their measuring.

A similar measurement process can be constructed by using stickers or ink-pad images to capture the height of the growth, thus generating a visual, iconic display of growth. As with manipulative nonstandard units of measurement, using stickers and water-soluble ink-pad stampers also allows the children to count actual units, that is, the stickers or stamped images, to tell how many stickers or stamped images tall the plant is. Attaching numbers to this type of process helps children to understand, at a rational and logical level, that the markings on standardized rulers refer to how many units of length something is rather than just focusing on the end points or lines on the ruler.