Instructor: Provide children with rulers for this lesson.

To tell where a place is, we must know its direction. But this is not all; we must also know how far it is from us; that is; its distance. To find this out we measure.

You may have heard of an inch, a foot, and a yard.

Look at your ruler.

Your ruler is twelve inches long, that is a foot. Three lengths of your ruler make a yard. A yard stick is three feet long.

With these measures you can tell how long your notebook or your table is, or how long and wide the room is.

The inch, foot, and yard are used for measuring short distances. But when we wish to tell the distance between objects far apart, we use another measure called a mile. A mile is much longer than a yard.

Think of some object that is a mile from your home. How long would it take you to walk that distance?

Instructor: Have pupils estimate distances by the eye, then verify by actual measurement. Continue the exercises until the work becomes quite accurate. Correct ideas of distance are necessary in order to understand how large the world is, and how far apart places are on its surface.



Notebook Work: Use a ruler to measure and/or estimate and record the measured distances into your notebook.



1. How many inches are your:

- a. Notebook Width

- b. Table Width



2. How many feet are your:

- a. Room Length

- b. Room Width

- c. Distance Around the Room Edges (Calculate)

- d. Window Width

- e. Door Width

- f. Door Height (Estimate)

3. Estimate how many yards are your:

- a. Street Width

- b. Tallest Nearby Tree Height

- c. Tallest Nearby Church Spire

4. Name the nearest river or creek, and give its direction from your home.

5. Give the direction and distance of the nearest church.

6. What must you know to go to any place?