Exploring difference in size

Family conversation

1. How would you identify the chair for young children in the above collage of pictures?
2. Is everything small about the chair for small children?
3. Is everything big about the big chair?
4. Let us see and compare a small chair and a big chair. How exactly are they different? Please use a small and a big chair to show that the legs, back, and armrest are smaller and bigger.
5. Let us see and compare a children’s shirt and an adult’s shirt. How exactly they are different?

Discuss with children

1. Which of the pictures in the collage shows the biggest thing?
2. Which of the pictures in the collage shows the smallest thing?
3. Which of the pictures in the collage is actually of a thing that maybe just smaller than the SUV?
4. Which of the pictures in the collage is actually of a thing that maybe just bigger than the mobile phone?
5. Which of the two, the school bag and the tricycle, is bigger in our experience? Why?
6. Find some things of the same size in your house?
7. Find some pairs of things in which one is longer than the other.
8. Take two things and identify the one which is longer than the other.

Hint: Compare the lengths of the two things by placing one next to the other.

9. What is the difficulty in comparing the length of two cars in a parking lot? Just show that putting things in proximity is essential to compare.
10. What is the difficulty in comparing the size of a tall and thin person and a short and fat person?

This reinforces that we need to focus only on the characteristic being compared, not other characteristics.

Let us explore

1. Draw an oval ( ) around the correct image.

2. Circle ( ) the objects that are of the same size in each row.

3. Draw a triangle ( ) around the fruit which is smaller.

Let us do it

1. Draw as per the instruction given in each row.

2. Draw as per the instruction in each row. Describe the size of your drawing.

Let us make

Multiple colour strips of different sizes

Materials required: Multiple colour sheets, scissors, and glue-stick

Directions:

Step 1:Take multiple coloured papers and cut 2 strips from each, paste the longer, and shorter in a table, as shown below.

Excerpted from the book ‘Foundations of mathematical thinking (Mathematics as a language)’ by Sandeep Srivastava and Saloni Srivastava