Measuring with Paper Clips

WHOA! I just looked back in my archives and realized that my son hasn't practiced measuring since July. Shame on me! And after heeding the reading summer camp teacher's advice and making the nuts and bolts game, I wanted another fun way to exercise my son's fine motor skills too. This activity combines both fine motor and measuring.

All you need are paper clips ... lots and lots of paper clips of the same size. Did I mention you need paper clips? I think you get the point.

I gave my son a worksheet I'd cooked up to get him started. While I don't want to overwhelm my son with worksheets, I do like that they sneak in extra reading practice and help me gauge how well he does following directions. (Download the worksheet I made here.)

The purpose of this activity is simple - to string paper clips to measure various items, such as:

the worksheet,

the chair he was sitting in,

and his pencil.

After measuring these (plus his foot and a book) he needed to review the number of paper clips each required and put them in order from greatest to least.

Stringing paper clips was a bit of a struggle for my son at first but, with some serious concentration and a whole heap of determination, he caught on.

We'll be doing this activity again, I'm sure!