Best Volume Activity Ever!

Now I know by saying "best volume activity ever" you might be thinking, "No, how could it be?" but seriously for my Grade 3/4 class, this is the best activity I have found.

When you teach younger children, you spend a lot of time working on informal units with volume - making cylinders and filling them with blocks, filling containers with sand or rice and trying to figure out which container holds the most. But for older children I had always moved towards some worksheets, which I am not a fan of.

But then.... I found this activity!

It was designed by Tania over at Mrs Poultney's Ponderings - I first saw it when she blogged about using it with her class - I remember commenting how excited I was to try it. So when it was volume time for us - we did it! Here are some happy snaps....

Firstly, there are three boxes in this kit. Each has been exactly measured so it fits a certain number of blocks. Children need to cut out and put together each box (I had them in groups of 3 so each group member made one box). 

Then you fill each of the blocks up with place value cubes (1cm cubes) and measure the volume of the box. You can see the little A on the side of the box, each box is numbered.

Here is the larger box. As you can see there is also a worksheet peeking out from the corner!

After children have filled up the three boxes and counted the blocks they fill in some questions about how many times blocks fit inside. 

The thing I really liked about this activity is that when I was wondering around, some children had different strategies for working out the volume of the box. (For example only measure length, then height, then width!) It was wonderful to see the children's thinking!

If you need a volume activity, you can't go past this one - it is a simple buy, print and copy off - no other preparation required by you. There are a couple of extra surprises in the pack too!

Here's the link so you can get your copy today, it's a bargain!

Volume and Capacity - Fill it Up!