One of the ways of helping bring Maths to life is by making your very own Skeleton. This exercise was beneficial to The Sensory Seeker because it was a very concrete activity. By that I mean he had a visual way of processing the information – as opposed to an abstract idea in his  head.

Real Life Measuring

First we measured different things – our hands, a chair, the table. We measured them using our hands. We compared how different sized hands (mine Vs the children’s) needed a different number of them for the measurement of the different objects. We then moved onto tape measures (soft and hard), rulers etc and talked about cms and inches.

This was a fun way to introduce measuring and was much better at holding The Sensory Seeker’s Interest.

Measuring Yourself to Make a Life-Sized Skeleton

The following week we made a life sized skeleton. We did this by taking different measurements on the body and then drew the same size for each part on a piece of paper. We then cut it out and attached it together. It was good to demonstrate how something the size of The Sensory Seeker could be put together from the smaller parts. It also gave him a better understanding of his bone structure – as well as things like fine motor practice (drawing and cutting), number sequencing, attention, instructions etc. We used blue tac and a biro to make holes for the split pins.

I think it was also good for self-esteem as now we have a bony version of The Sensory Seeker proudly hanging on the back of our kitchen door. It also fits in very nicely with our Pirate theme – which really began when we spent the night in a Pirate room at Legoland Windsor.