Halloween is one of the very best times of year for talking about sizes; understanding size is an important thinking strategy and kindergarten readiness skill. But, like Halloween, there are some tricks about sizes.
Size is all about relationships, rather than the bigness or smallness of something. A fairly regular sized pumpkin can be big when compared to the miniature ones and it can be very, very small when compared to the giant ones.
Pumpkins of different dimensions can help with size relationships. This friend got to pick out 3 pumpkins and he choose 1 small, 1 medium and 1 big. But he had to be able to carry the big one. His small pumpkin is still bigger than this one with a black marker makeup face and a snow hat sitting on a book. And his big one is smaller than this one that won the competition last week!
Kids often hear that they are both big and small at practically the same time, “You are too big for that coat,” and “You are too small to do that.” These words can be confusing until children realize that size compares things. In order to figure this out, they will need lots of experiences and opportunities with objects of different sizes. They need the hands-on time that goes with words like small, medium, big, tiny, large, tall, long, short, and others.
There will be times that kids just don’t get it, no matter how we explain, as in “Yes, those are small candies, but lots of small candies makes a big pile.” How can small be big? Sometimes as big people, we forget that learning such basics as size can be difficult for little ones.
Learning about sizes, can be quite a trick, can’t it?