Getting students engaged in their learning is easy with these hands-on activities for teaching volume! Teaching volume is such a fun unit but it can be challenging to come up with new activities as students do need a bit of practice.
However, with a variety of hands-on volume activities for elementary students, it will never be wasted time. Volume is such a real-world concept that overlaps so many areas of our daily lives. Plus, basic number sense skills are entwined throughout so there’s so much opportunity for spiral review too!
Most of these activities to teach volume are open-ended or can be repeated. This means you won’t be constantly changing or creating new tasks. Perfect!
Start here! A foundational volume activity should be to use unit cubes to fill a variety of rectangular prisms to explore the concept of volume. Have students fill the prism, then dump out the cubes and try to recreate the same prism on their desk. This will really solidify their understanding of the concept.
Challenge your students to build prisms based on requirements you give. Have students work in pairs and add a timer for a fun bit of competition. Increase the level of challenge as you go. For example:
I love being able to combine movement with math lessons! Even better when we get to go outside and enjoy a beautiful spring day.
You can design this scavenger hunt in a variety of ways.
As you can see, this Volume Scavenger Hunt can be adapted to a variety of levels of difficulty and environments.
There are plenty of hands on activities for teaching volume that don’t require a ton of materials or preparation. Dice games are always a favourite and are perfect for easy, low-prep math centres!
Roll-a-Volume is a spin on a popular area game in my class. Each student rolls 3 dice (or one die 3 times) to find the length, width and depth of their prism. They record these numbers on their paper then calculate the volume. All players must agree on the answers then the player with the largest volume wins a point. Play continues until a student gets 5 points.
Looking for some really fun ways to teach volume? Channel your inner Bob Barker for some game show-esque fun!
Preparation: Collect a few household boxes (cereal boxes, cracker boxes, shoe box, dictionary or textbook,…) and find the volume of each in whatever unit you choose. Record each of the volumes on large index cards that can be presented in front of the classroom.
Play: Have students work in teams to try to match the box with the volume. Play it ‘Price it Right’ style and have each team take turns matching one box with one volume card or make it a race to match them all. Your choice!
Create a set of cards with images of prisms, another set with the dimensions of those prisms and a third set with the actual volume of each prism. Have students work together to sort the 3 sets of cards to find the ones that match.
This is another hands-on volume activity that is super easy to put in a math centre. You can decide the level of difficulty and the number of cards included to differentiate for your entire class or specific groups of students.
Task cards are always an awesome versatile teaching activity. There are so many ways you can use task cards that go beyond just answering questions.
I wrote a blog post filled with 18 different ways to use task cards so be sure to check that out. But some of my favourites are pasting them around the room for a type of scavenger hunt, games like Scoot or Bingo or as station rotations.
In today’s world, there are so many tools already available to us, we’d be foolish to keep re-creating the wheel and wasting our time! The internet is filled with interactive volume activities that students love.
A few of my favourite online volume games and activities are…
Kahoot is an interactive game that has plenty of quizzes already created and available for use. Or you can creat your own questions from scratch. I love Kahoot as a whole class in teams but it can also be done virtually or in small groups.
MathGames.com – Practice questions with immediate feedback at different levels.
NCTM Cubes – Students can fill boxes with cubes, rows of cubes or layers of cubes allowing for scaffolded practice.
BBC Bitesize – What is Volume? and How to Calculate Volume include tutorials, examples, activities and quizzes for students.
IXL.com – practice volume questions (I believe it allows 10 questions without an account).
I like to keep things simple and fuss-free but there are a few tips I’ve picked up over the years in the classroom. (Yep, learned the hard way!)
💡 Use fabric or flexible measuring tapes rather than rulers. Not only does their flexibility help make them more functional, you’ll thank me for the lack of ‘sword fights’ happening… You can probably pick some up at the dollar store or grab them on Amazon here.
💡 Provide a variety of tools to measure so students can explore different strategies and different units.
💡 Whenever students are moving around (like the scavenger hunt ideas above), use a classroom timer. It is so much easier to wrangle them back to you at the end!
💡 Print out grid paper for students to create their own nets/prisms. Make sure the grid size matches whatever unit cubes you have available. For example, if you’re using one inch cubes, print out 1 inch grid paper.
I hope this post has given you some ideas for teaching volume! Teaching it in the spring is the perfect time to get your kids up and moving with some hands-on learning. Not only because the weather’s getting nicer and they’re getting antsy, but because by now you’ve got your routines and expectations nailed.
If you’d like more support with teaching volume in a hands-on, conceptual way, you might want to check out our complete Measurement Units for grades 4 – 8.
✓ collaborative, problem-solving 3-part lessons for every expectation (with lesson plans),
✓ balanced math centres,
✓ formative and summative assessment, and more!
