Teaching measurement is so more fun when you use picture books. Check out this handy list of the BEST Children’s Books For Teaching Measurement and get your kids hooked into learning all about measuring!
Are you teaching your kids measurement? Try introducing this math concept with children’s books. Your kids will love learning about measurement and be super engaged and ready to learn.
Our Big list of books about measurement includes a mountain of measuring concepts including length, weight (mass), time, perimeter and area. Grab these children’s books for your classroom to make the perfect classroom library collection!
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Measurement can be really fun and hands-on but understanding how to measure is quite complicated. There’s so many different things to think about which can easily overwhelm your students.
But by using a measurement book you can introduce a measurement topic in a fun easy to understand story that makes the ins and outs of measuring a bit easier to learn.
So using children’s picture books are a perfect resource to help your kids to connect with and build their understandings about all things measurement! What’s more there’s research to support the use of children’s books as an effective method of instruction. (Read the research by Carolyn Tucker, Matthew Boggan & Sallie Harper).
Not only are books about measurement an excellent way to learn about length, capacity, weight and area, but using books on measurement is also an excellent way to integrate literacy into the maths curriculum. Double prizes!!!!
While we were researching this big list of measurement read alouds we found some wonderful free lesson plan ideas too, so we’ve added in these links throughout the post for you. They’re sure to help you get started with some awesome hands on measuring activity ideas to do with your students.
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Children’s Books For Teaching Measurement
If you’re anything like us, when it comes to children’s picture books we have to have our very own copy, we just LOVE kids books! This awesome list of children’s books for teaching measurement contains our affiliate links so you can easily buy your own copy! Here’s our disclosure policy to explain affiliate links
Here’s our list of the best books about measurement for your next standard or non standard measurement lessons. Have fun!
Spaghetti and Meatballs For All is not just a measurement book. It’s such a clever book that links arrays, multiplication, division and the commutative law to area and perimeter. In the book Mr. and Mrs. Comfort are planning a family reunion with Mr. Comfort cooking up his famous spaghetti and meatballs.
Meanwhile Mrs. Comfort works on the seating plan and arranges eight tables and thirty-two chairs so that everyone will have a seat. The tables look lovely, the food is ready, and here come the guests–with their own seating plans! This delightful Marilyn Burns Brainy Day Book uses wit and humor to draw children into thinking about so many mathematical concepts including measuring area and perimeter. Grab A FREE Lesson Plan here
Actual Size – An excellent book on measurement that includes beautiful illustrations drawn to scale, facts and measurements about the longest, smallest, largest, tallest and heaviest animals. A great story that develops a range of measurement concepts including; units of measurement, comparing and ordering, scale, and the language of measurement in the animal world.
“How big is a crocodile? What about a tiger, or the world’s largest spider? Can you imagine a tongue that is two feet long or an eye that’s bigger than your head? Sometimes facts and figures don’t tell the whole story. Sometimes you need to see things for yourself—at their actual size.”
Grab Your Free Activities To go With This Book here
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Click the images for Measurement Teaching Resources…
Prehistoric Actual Size is an amazing picture book about measurement where students can actually see and compare the size and scale of different animals. Your students will love coming face-to-face with the ten-foot-tall terror bird. And staring into the mouth of the largest meat eater ever to walk the earth.
They’ll be in awe of a millipede that is more than six feet long, or a dinosaur smaller than a chicken? In this “actual size” look at the prehistoric world, which includes two dramatic gatefolds, you’ll meet these awe-inspiring creatures, as well as many others. This book will captivate and engage any reluctant learner to learn the concepts of measurement!
Perimeter, Area, and Volume: A Monster Book of Dimensions is another fun book on measurement. Your kids will love learning the difference between 2D & 3D objects, length, width, and height– and all the different ways we represent those figures– Adler shows how changing the dimensions of an object affects its size. . . . with some help from a cast of funny, friendly movie monsters.
Explaining key vocabulary in simple text and offering numerous concrete examples and sample math problems with included solutions, Perimeter, Area, and Volume is a perfect introduction to two- and three-dimensional geometry. The star-studded cast of monsters will help you calculate the perimeter of the set, the area of the movie screen, and the volume of your box of popcorn
Learning about dimensions has never been so entertaining! Grab Your FREE Lesson Ideas here
Click the images for Teaching Resources to help teach measurement…
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Millions To Measure is another fabulous book about measurement. In this book kids learn that there are millions of things to measure . . . and almost as many ways to measure them!
Marvelosissimo the Mathematical Magician is back — and ready to explore the invention of length, weight, and volume measurements. A fun children’s book about measurement to explain the differences between standard and metric units of measurement.
After that, with another wave of his wand, the wizard introduces the world of metrics and makes it easy to understand the basic pattern of meters, litres, and grams. With Steven Kellogg’s playful and delightfully detailed illustrations, measuring has never been such a blast.
Grab a FREE Lesson Plan here.
Is The Blue Whale The Biggest thing There Is? In this children’s book on measurement students explore if the blue whale is the biggest creature on Earth. They also discover a hollow Mount Everest could hold billions of whales! And though Mount Everest is enormous, it is pretty small compared to the Earth.
A blue whale is big, in fact it’s huge – but is it really the biggest thing there is? A fun book exploring size, proportion and the comparative language of measurement.
Click the images for ideas for teaching measurement…
Measuring Penny – Lisa has an important homework assignment–to measure something in several different ways. She has to use standard units like inches and non standard units like paper clips to find out height, width, length, weight, volume, temperature, and time. Such a relatable story for kids, they’ll love it and measuring!
Lisa decides to measure her dog, Penny, and measures Penny’s Nose, Tail and dog biscuits… and that’s only the beginning! Lisa learns a lot about her dog and about measuring, and even has fun doing it. Grab a FREE Teacher Lesson Plan here
How Tall, How Short, How Far Away – If you think a yard is a place to play ball, feet are only good for wearing shoes, and a palm is just a tree that grows in Miami, think again! They are all actually units of measure–different ways of measuring how tall, how short and how faraway things are.
This is an excellent way to introduce kids to where measurement came from! This text covers the history of measurement from Ancient Egypt to Roman times, all the way up to present day metric and standard measurement. With hands on activities throughout the text this book offers so much and will span several lessons.
Grab your Free Lesson Plan ideas here
How Big Is A Foot? – Excellent book about non standard measurements and the need for standard units of measurement.
The King wants to give the Queen something special for her birthday. The Queen has everything, everything except a bed. The trouble is that no one in the Kingdom knows the answer to a very important question: How Big is a Bed? because beds at the time had not yet been invented. The Queen’s birthday is only a few days away. How can they figure out what size the bed should be?
Free Teacher lesson plan and activities available here.
A Second Is A Hiccup -This lyrical poem that plays out the joys of childhood in seconds, hours, weeks and years is a wonderful choice for bedtime, playtime or anytime!
Happy thoughts on ever-longer periods of time spiral out in easy rhymes, as illustrations full of colour, light and energy reflect the perfection of childhood days.
A charming picture book that introduces children to the concept of time, units of time and estimation.
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Super Sand Castle Saturday– This is a great foundation book for building measurement skills and introducing the idea of standard units and the metric system. It features a story about kids entering a sandcastle building contest and how the winner is determined. If you’re looking for a book to kick off your measurement unit, this is the perfect choice!
Juan, Sarah and Laura are building sand castles. But which one’s tallest? Juan’s is only two shovels high, while Sarah’s is three. Laura’s moat is one big spoon deep, while Juan’s is two little spoons deep. Too bad their shovels and spoons aren’t the same size.
Grab a FREE Lesson Plan idea from the author here.
How Tall– How many chipmunks equals the height of a redwood tree? Discover this comparison and more in this wacky, laugh-out-loud introduction to height.
Quirky illustrations and lyrical text help kids explore measurable attributes of a variety of things in a uniquely engaging way. A perfect read-aloud for young science lovers and budding mathematicians.
Get a Free lesson plan idea here
Inch By Inch – Introduce learners to measuring length and using units of measurement with this favorite classic picture book.
The story introduces children to a winning, winsome inchworm who can measure anything under the sun, from a robin’s tail to a toucan’s beak. When a hungry nightingale threatens to eat him for breakfast unless he can measure her song, the inchworm will have to cleverly solve the dilemma.
Grab your Free lesson plan here.
Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland– Join Sir Cumference, Lady Di of Ameter, and their son Radius for wordplay, puns, and problem solving in this angle-packed math adventure. A witty way to learn all about angles, protractors, degrees calculating angles and units of measurement.
In the third installment of the beloved Sir Cumference series, Radius must prove himself on his quest for knighthood by rescuing a king. Sent off with the family medallion for luck, Radius dodges dangers and dragons. The ultimate challenge lies in a mysterious castle with a maze of many angles.
Grab your Free Lesson Plan here
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Sir Cumference and the First Round Table – Join Sir Cumference, Lady Di of Ameter, and their son Radius for wordplay, puns, and problem solving in this geometry-packed math adventure.
Full of puns, wit and humor this is another excellent children’s book for teaching measurement and geometry and introduces the math of circles to kids beautifully! A great way to cover the language of circles: radius, diameter, circumference, chord, tangent and formulae for circle calculations.
Download a Free lesson plan here.
A Second A Minute A Week With Days in It – Brian Cleary is back with his wonderful comical CATegorical cats introducing young readers to the concept of how time is measured.
First is a definition of time as a specific moment, as shown in the hour, minute, and second on a clock or in a day, month, and year on a calendar. Then each unit of a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, and decade are explored using activities that children can easily relate to.
A must have teacher’s resource for teaching units of time!
How Long or How Wide? – Brian Cleary and Brian Gable bring their trademark sense of humor to the subject of measuring length. Clever examples, rhymes and playful characters introduce kids to standard units of measurement, the metric measurement system. In fact everything about measuring length. Excellent!
The Librarian who Measured The Earth -This colorfully illustrated biography of the Greek philosopher and scientist Eratosthenes, who compiled the first geography book and accurately measured the globe’s circumference, is just right for budding mathematicians, scientists, historians, and librarians! Filled with fascinating details about Eratosthenes’s world.
On The Scale A Weighty Tale – Another gem in the Math is CATagorical series, kids just love this fun introduction to the standard and metric measurements of weight.
“In this wacky look at weight, Brian P. Cleary and Brian Gable introduce essential measurement units–from grams to pounds to tons. The comical cats of the wildly popular CATegorical series show how to measure trucks, trains, ducks, cranes, and more.”
Room For Ripley– Carlos pours cups, pints and quarts of water into his fish bowl, getting ready for his new puppy, Ripley. Readers can learn about capacity as they see just how much water it takes to make room for Ripley!
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Did we miss one? Let us know your favourite books for teaching measurement in the comments!
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