Capacity Man or Gallon Guy

We did a fun activity as part of our measurement unit. It is called Capacity Man or Gallon Guy.  This week we will be making  Gallon Robot to teach cups, pints, quarts, and gallon. I start by having the kids watch the above video. I also have a poster in the class that shows cups, pints, quarts and gallons. So we have a little discussion. Then we look at Brainpop’s game on the web during our computer time. It’s a fun interactive game you can find HERE. My students love to learn these things and play them on the ipod too.

Gallon Guy Art Project

Gallon Guy is a kind of Capacity Man.  It will help teach the different types and vocabulary for liquid measurements. Measurement is limited in our core, but since this is a gifted class of kids, I thought I would add capacity for enrichment, and also it is in our Envision Math series.  I do like this Monster Math Guy a lot better.  He has all the liquid capacity terms and you could have the kids copy him but make their own “monster” or “robot” art project just using the cups and pints and gallons in correct sizes but choose their colors and make their own monster face.  You could call it your measurement monsters.

I found this cute pic at Squidoo HERE. It looks fun and easy.

We learned that 4 quarts = 1 gallon, 2 pints = 1 quart, 8 pints = 1 gallon, 4 cups = 1 quart, 16 cups = 1 gallon, etc.
 This gives you the idea how to structure your own Capacity Man.  I’m going to use similar sizes and colors to this guy to make for my classroom. A nice blackline master of all the shapes can be found HERE at Education World.

robot kids craft
HERE at No Time For Flashcards I found this cute robot we could use as an idea of where to start on
our “Gallon Guy”. The kids could design their own robot faces for their gallon guy “robot” instead of the paper plate which looks kinda plain.  Let’s be creative with our gallon guy!  Plus we can get rid of some of our paper scraps in the process! 


You’ll need 3 sheets of paper, each one a different color to make the cups, pints and quarts.  Then I used a gray 8 x 9 piece  for his head and a blue 10 x 10 piece for his body.
This cute rendition of Gallon Guy or Gallon Girl is from Coon Dogs. 
The cutest one I found online was this one….It’s from HERE is a free download from Amber Polk at Adventures of a 3rd Grade Teacher.  It is really cute. It’s a Gallon Man with the body of a Superhero! That would be so fun for my kids too.  She has a download for the quart, pin, cup face and chest area.  I’m thinking I’ll still do the robot head.  Even though superhero is also a cute idea.   2 cups is a pint. 2 pints is a quart, 4 quarts is a gallon. 4 cups is a quart, 2 quarts is 1/2 a gallon. Kids can learn and memorize these Capacity Measurements with their Gallon Guy.

 So HERE are OUR Capacity Robots.  The kids named them everything from Gallon Guy and Gallon Girl to Gallon Bot 3000. They all turned out looking quite cute.  I like the superhero idea too but I thought my little guys would do a better job making a creative robot face with scraps of recycled construction paper.

Here was my sample and our class brainstorm for names for the Gallon  Robots. They each named their own guy. 
Teaching Volume and Capacity through this art project was great!  
Capacity Man, Gallon Man, Gallon Guy…it’s all the same…..
Some added necks and buttons to their Gallon Guy Robots too….
This one had 3D parts on the face…Love the Billy Bob “Bot”  hehe…
Yes this gallonator looks like a Gladiator, doesn’t it?  
Gallon Girl …but she’s having a bad hair day…..:
Gallon Girls and Guys – All the kids really understood capacity measurement after this activity….
SUPER gladiator!  Eek! He’s a little scary looking! 

We did 5 measurement centers to go along with our math unit in measurement this week. HERE is the link to our measurement centers.

Hope you enjoyed our Measurement Men!  

The kids learned how to tell me how many cups, pints, and quarts were in a gallon.    Her FREE LINK is HERE. It is by Amber Polk. It is really cute weather you go the superhero route or the robot route, both are great learning tools. And our robots turned out really fun!

Measurement Centers

 We had some fun measurement centers this week as well as making a Measurement Man….pictured here

  A game I purchased that is called How Tall Am I is a fun measurement activity. HERE WAS CENTER 1- LENGTH MEASUREMENT USING INCHES.

It’s a fun inch measuring game called “How Tall Am I?”  Lots of fun mis-matching layers of fun people to get a total “height” in inches….
How Tall Am I Game
They used inch and centimeter rulers to measure the totem poles of  wacky people they made….It’s a fun measurement game my kids love to play on rainy days. 

 HERE WAS CENTER 2 – WEIGHT MEASUREMENT

These girls are measuring weight using our class scale. They chose a classroom item to weigh in “bears” or “cubes” This is another type of non-standard measurement they worked on.  Each had to write up their measurement on their Envision Math estimation data worksheet. 
I also have some “gram” measurement weights that kids could use the next time we do measurement centers.

 CENTER 3 – VOLUME MEASUREMENT

I had cylinders to show volume and the kids added “cups” to the cylinder to get used to the terms volume and cups. And that  2 cups make a pint. 
I borrowed a gallon, quart, pint and cup measuring set from my coworker down the hall who purchased one a few years back.  Here the kids are doing some estimation pages on cups and pints. 
A set similar to this was set out at a center all week too. Nobody paid much attention to it, but I was NOT going to add water or anything crazy like that. I’m sure it would have made it more popular though….hehe…

 THIS WAS CENTER 4 –  INCH AND CENTIMETER MEASUREMENT

I think you can find these worms and the cards below at any teacher supply store. 
Here are the game cards that go with the measurement worms. As you can see I have 3 kinds of worms to measure. Some are linking inch cubes, some are linking “inchworms” and some are different lengths of rubber worms. The cards were kinda easy for my class….but they still liked measuring the worms…..
 I combine worms to use rulers to measure in inches and centimeters.. I also bought a class set of measuring worm cards for kids to follow the directions and measure items on the cards.   

 CENTER 5 –  FEET AND YARDS MEASUREMENT

The last center was to work as partners with my class set of measuring tapes. The assignment was to measure 5 big things in the classroom using feet, inches and yards and write the totals down to compare with the whole class later.

Then for art this week we made a Capacity Man we called “Gallon Guy” or “Gallon Girl” and we used heads that were uniquely decorated like ROBOTS. THIS WAS TO LEARN CAPACITY/VOLUME OR LIQUID MEASUREMENT.

Capacity Man, or Gallon Guy….lots of fun! 

Gallon Guy is Great for teaching volume in cups, pints, quarts and gallons or if you want a great enrichment activity! 

The kids learned how to tell me how many cups, pints, and quarts were in a gallon.  Here was a sample I used.  Her FREE LINK is HERE. It is by Amber Polk. It is really cute. HERE  is a link to  pictures  of our Gallon Guys. They turned out pretty cool.

But not quite as “COOL” as these guys….all dressed up for 80s Days yesterday! 
Do the 80s remind you of the 50s? You should have seen the Fonzi type hair and
rolled up pants….too cute!