How Warm Is It? Cold, Warm or Hot

A key runs across the top of this kindergarten page: three thermometers at different levels, each beside a piece of clothing — a scarf, a T-shirt and sunglasses. Below it, four cards each show one more thermometer and the same three pictures in a shuffled order. The scales carry tick marks and three tinted bands but no numerals, so the child reads the height of the orange column against the bands rather than a figure, then circles the clothing that fits.

Reading a scale by position is the skill, and taking the numbers off is what makes it a kindergarten page rather than a measurement one. The key does the defining: whatever the bands mean, the three examples show what each height looks like, and every card is answered by comparison. Two of the four cards on the sheet shown sit in the cold band at different heights, which is the useful pair — the answer is the band, not the exact level.

One sheet, one key, four readings. The instruction names cold, warm and hot, but those three words are not printed in the key, so say them as you point at the three examples before the children start. This is the measurement face of the weather family and a good bridge into a real classroom thermometer, which has the numbers this one leaves out.