Big and small

Today we were learning all about the opposites 'big' and 'small'. We talked about different words for big such as huge, massive and enormous and different words for small like little or tiny. Miss Ayres showed us a mystery box - what do you think was inside it? It was... a smaller box! We opened that box and found... another box! We kept going until we had five boxes! Each one had to be smaller than the box it was in so it would fit.

We explored lots of things to help us understand size and measuring and help us practise comparing things by size, such as saying "this is smaller than..." or "this is bigger than..."

We explored the stacking boxes and also the Russian dolls - you have to put them inside each other in the right order or they won't fit!

We played a game on the whiteboard where we had to match the right food to the right bear based on its size - the big bear got the biggest food and the little bear had the smallest pieces!

We made models with different sized boxes and tubes.

We explored different sized shapes and explored how they could fit together. We also used 2D shapes of different colours to make pictures.

We drew pictures of things that are different sizes or cut some shapes of different sizes out ourselves.

We explored different sized bottles, jugs and cylinders in the water tray and different sized buckets and moulds in the sand.

We used different sized cutters in the playdough and also used our hands to shape the playdough into different things. Hannah shaped the playdough into a small, medium and large bowl - well done Hannah!

We looked at the plants we are growing and compared them - the bean that is growing in the sand is taller than the bean that is growing in the soil!

We made towers of different heights with multilink cubes and stacking counters.

We did a jigsaw of 'small, medium and large' - you had to match the right things together and put them in order from smallest to biggest to make the pieces fit together.

We looked at lots of books and stories about size including The Smartest Giant in Town, Mr Big and the Little Bear stories as well as non-fiction books about different sized animals.

We used the boxes to make tall towers!

In the role play area we acted out the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, using different sized bowls, spoons and chairs for the three bears.

What things can you find at home that are different sizes? What words could you use to describe them?