Organizing for 15 minutes per day is a fun family routine. Once kids get into the habit, it’s hard to make them stop at 15 minutes. After 30 minutes of morning chores where everyone makes their beds, tidies their rooms, and handles their individual chores (ie. emptying the dishwasher), we organize. Favorites include organizing games, organizing a bookshelf, and organizing the tacklebox. Mom keeps kids on track by asking what they’re on every few minutes while she is organizing the Tupperware cupboard or computer files. After 15 minutes, stop and get on with your day.
Organizing is a great context for discussing volume. The volume of a box is length x width x height. So when organizing the games, you can ask the volume of the closet or cabinet taken up by games. For example, my son’s games closet that includes Knex kits, Legos, shells collections (and who knows what else) has a stack that is approximately 3 ft. x 1 ft. x 4 ft. = 12 ft3. Notice that the units on volume are cubic units.
You can also discuss the difference between volume and capacity. The volume of space taken up by the games is 12 cubic ft. But the capacity of the closet is how much the closet can hold.
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