Smart as Birbal: Finding Shorter and Longer Objects

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Many years ago in India, there was an emperor named Akbar. In his court, there was a very clever person, called Birbal. Akbar used to taste Birbal’s intelligence many times. On one such occasion, Akbar drew a line in the sand while he was walking on the banks of a river with Birbal. Akbar asked Birbal, “Can you make this line shorter without touching it?”. Birbal immediately drew another longer line beside the original and told Akbar, “Now your line has become shorter”.

This story is perfect to tell children about how concepts like, short and tall/long, small and big, light and heavy, are all relative. These concepts are not used in absolute sense. For early learners, the comparison activities usually focus on two animals or objects, where the child has to label them as short and tall (or heavy and light, etc.). However, with the Birbal’s story in the background, we can make this little more challenging and children will learn that the labels ‘short’ and ‘long’ may change as the context changes.

The Activity:

  • Choose around 10 animals or objects (common enough so that children know them) of different heights.
  • Make the picture cut-outs as shown here.


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  • Tell the child/children to mark the length of each animal/object.
  • Now, take two objects and ask the child to label them ‘short’ and ‘long’.
  • Keep the ‘short’ object back in the pool.
  • Tell the child to act like Birbal and find another object that will make the ‘long’ one shorter.

Variations:

This game can also be played the other way round, where you keep the ‘long’ one back in the pool and ask to make ‘short’ one longer.

The child can also arrange all the items from shortest to longest.


Happy Learning 😀😀

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