Mass: Heavy and Light

This lesson was contributed by:

Marthese Morris Maths Support Team

This lesson is for:

Lesson Duration:

40 mins.

What should you expect from this lesson?

This lesson provides young mathematicians the opportunity to experience and use language related to mass (heavy and light). In addition, they get the opportunity to extend to language such as heavier or lighter to compare two quantities, then more than two by making direct comparisons of masses.

Print this lesson

Press the button to print this lesson

Share on print
Print

How to carry out this lesson at home:

These resources will help:
Shopping bag
Items from the kitchen cupboards or even toys.

Step 1: The first task is simply done to understand what we mean by heavy and light, and to understand that objects have varied weights. Start with a shopping bag with one or two small items

Ask: Can you carry that?
Introduce the word ‘light‘. For example ‘I think you can because it is ‘light.’

Every time add a few more items and ask the same questions every time.

Ask: Can you still carry that?
How does it feel now? Encourage the use of words such as ‘light’ and ‘heavy‘.
Is it a bit heavier now?

You will reach a point where the shopping bag is too full and it is too heavy to carry. ‘It is too heavy to carry now’.
While we start taking some items out we can say that the bag is getting lighter.

Step 2
Display all the items in front of the child. Encourage the child to pick the items one by one, lift and talk about if they consider it heavy or light.

Child can go on and pick any two items of his/her choice. Once lifted they can talk about which of the items is heavier and which one is lighter of the two.

Set up two sections on a table one for the heavier items and one for the lighter items.

Extension:
Choose 3 items and ask the child which one is the lightest and which one is the heaviest. Put them in order of estimated weight.
Repeat this with a few items.

All the resources you need to carry out this lesson at home:

There is 1 Resource for this lesson

  scale mass .png | download

Featured Video of the lesson:

Share this lesson

If you enjoyed this, or think this is a great lesson, please feel free to share it on your social media tools.

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on whatsapp
WhatsApp