Today I showed the children a map of the woods ( Forestry commission) and we discussed that a map is a birds-eye view and everything is much smaller than in real life. I explained that this means the map is ‘drawn to scale’ then showed them the two different types of OS map; 1:25 000 and 1:50 000. 2cm = 1km and 4cm = 1km. The children understood that there would be more detail on the map where 4cm = 1km. I then asked them to make a simple house on the ground with sticks. We re-grouped and I asked them to make another but twice as big- I showed how to use a stick as a measuring tool etc. We toured the houses and I tested them to make sure that the bigger ones were twice as big – sometimes the smaller house was 1/3 the size of the larger one etc.

For the last challenge the children had to make a house 1/2 the size of the original house. We toured these and the children understood that the larger house was 4x bigger than the smaller on. In the end they could explain that they were learning about scale etc.