Friendly worms

Required materials

See Materials that come with this resource to download:

•  Play dough recipe 6 (.pdf)
• Friendly worms activity (.pdf)

What to do

Have your child explore the play dough, making and talking about different shapes. Suggest that your child make some pretend worms or snakes with the dough.

Have them lay two straight worms side by side, telling and showing you which worm is the longer, which is the shorter, or saying if they are the same length.

Now ask your child to line up more than two worms, side by side, but with each worm’s head at the edge of the table. (It is important when children are comparing lengths that all lengths have the same starting place.)

Have them use the language of “longer, shorter, longest, shortest, nearly as long as, much shorter than, the same length as ...”

Together, use the correct language of width to describe worms: “wider, narrower or thinner, widest, narrowest, the same width as …”

Pose problems such as:

• Can you make the second-shortest worm crawl away? Tell me about the worms that are left.
• Make the longest worm crawl away. Now, which is the longest? How do you know?
• Can you make the thinnest or narrowest worm crawl away? Now tell me about the worms that are left behind, etc. 

What to expect your child to do

• Correctly use the specific language associated with length and width instead of using "bigger or smaller", as this is not necessarily specific to length. 
• Correctly order their worms from longest to shortest and from widest to narrowest, describing their actions as they do so.

He kupu Māori

play dough	poikere
worm	noke, toke
straight worm	noke torotika
length	roa
longer	he roa ake
much longer	he tino roa ake
shorter	he poto ake
much shorter	he tino poto ake
longest	he roa rawa atu
shortest	he poto rawa atu
same length	he ōrite te roa
almost same length	he pātata te roa
width/breadth	whānui
wider	he whānui ake
widest	he whānui rawa atu
much wider	he tino whānui ake
thin/narrow	whāiti, tūpuhi
thinner/narrower	he whāiti ake
thinest	he whāiti rawa atu

He whakawhitinga kōrero

• Hangaia he noke tino roa. (Make a very long worm.)
• Hangaia he noke whānui ake i tēnā. (Make a wider or flatter worm than that.)
• Hangaia kia rua ngā noke. (Make two worms.)
• Whakatakotoria ngā noke tētahi ki raro i tētahi. (Place the worms one under the other.)
• Ko ngā upoko o ia noke ka tīmata i te tapa o te tēpu, kia kitea ai ko tēhea te noke roa ake, ko tēhea te noke poto ake. (The heads of each worm should start at the edge of the table so we can see which worm is longer and which worm is shorter.)
• Pēhea nei te rahi o tēnei noke? (How big is this worm?)
• He whānui, he tūpuhi rānei tēnei noke? (Is this worm wide/fat, or thin?)