Fish Bowl Measurement

Earth week has been filled with exploring the world in little and big ways.  At the beginning of the week our focus was on measuring to the nearest 1/4 inch.  I saw an idea on Pinterest for a measurement project with fish - which is perfect since we're studying vertebrates and measurement.  The site I noticed this on was "Fun in the Fours".  Apparently it's originally from another site, but modified somewhat...isn't all teaching a bit of this and a bit of that to make it work for our particular group of kiddos????  Anywho...I thought we were in need of a REAL reason to measure and a bit of NATURE based art to go with it.

The kids are each given a set of dimensions, such as 5 1/4 inch x 6 1/2 inch.  They aren't given a ton of directions except that they are expected to draw a rectangle that fits the given measurement.  I let them know that I will be picky.  We also reviewed the properties of a rectangle so they would remember that they have 4 right angles.  Some kids finished rather quickly and showed me their lopsided attempts at a rectangle. I had them prove they measured accurately and that they had SQUARE corners by matching up with a Post It Note.  Obviously some of them reworked their rectangles a time or TWO.

Once they finally had their rectangles ready - YES with straight lines - we sat down to talk about fish.  I was pleased the kids knew their special characteristics and that a dolphin was NOT a fish!!  This part gets tricky because they needed to create a drawing of a fish that would fit their rectangle perfectly.  So if they had a rather squarish rectangle - a long skinny fish just wouldn't do.  If their rectangle was long and skinny - no they couldn't do a puffer fish!

At this point they had a chance to look at the fish from the 4th grade classroom across the hall - funny as it may seem my good friend and I had the very same idea on the same day and decided to collaborate on the project!!!  My 3rd graders were VERY impressed with the fish creations and worked hard to MEASURE up to the older kids.  Some kiddos really struggle to make theirs fit and had to retry and even redraw their rectangles.

The next day a small group of my kids with a parent "dove" into an interesting math problem...given the size of the fish in our room and basically the same sizes in the neighboring room, how big of a fish bowl should we create for our fish?

As you will see on the photos, the kids thought the fish should have some space for swimming, but the size turned out pretty perfect.  Other children in my classroom helped to design the bowl, while another volunteer helped kiddos to sponge paint the beautiful water of the bowl.

Finally they outlined their fish in black permanent marker
and painted with watercolor paints.  I must admit the fish bowl is admired by all in our hall:0)