March 2024

How Heavy is This Meerkat?

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Academic Standards

 

Reading Objective:

Students will identify ways in which zoo scientists use knowledge of an animal’s behavior to get its cooperation in being weighed. They will also learn that scientists collect data.

 

Reading Level:

520L; GRL: K

 

Next Generation Science Standards:

Practice 3: Planning and Carrying Out Investigations

Practice 4: Analyzing and Interpreting Data

 

Vocabulary:

curious, patience, social, data

Use these questions to check students’ understanding and stimulate discussion:

 

1. What is the main reason scientists weigh and measure every animal?
(to make sure they are healthy and growing well)

2. Which do you need to weigh a meerkat?
(patience)

3. Why do you have to weigh each squirrel monkey quickly?
(Answers will vary.)

4. What animal would you like to weigh, and how would you do it?
(Answers will vary.)

Go online to print or project the Reading Checkpoint.

 

  • The London Zoo’s heaviest animal is Maggie the giraffe—she weighs 1,600 pounds.
  • The lightest is a leafcutter ant, which weighs less than an ounce—about as much as a grain of sand.
  • The squirrel monkeys take the longest to weigh. They would rather play with each other than step on the scale by themselves!

Materials: rulers, pencils, classroom objects, copies
of the skill sheet

Overview:  Kids practice estimation and measurement as they hunt for objects of various lengths, estimating which objects will work, and measuring to see if they do.

Directions:

  1. Remind students that zoo scientists weigh and measure animals as part of their jobs. In fact, almost all scientists measure things as part of their jobs. Today your kid scientists will practice their own measuring skills.
  2. We measure with rulers and other tools. But before we do, we often estimate measurements with our eyes. Ask kids to look around the room. What do they see in the classroom that seems about 6 inches long? Demonstrate the length with a ruler if you like.
  3. Pass out the skill sheets. Either individually or as teams, kids will go on a measurement hunt in the classroom. (Tell them what’s off-limits for the hunt.)
  4. Their mission: Find objects in the classroom that meet the length requirements on the skill sheet (some rounding up is OK).
  5. If there’s time, kids can challenge each other to find more objects of certain lengths and confirm by measuring.