Looking for a fun, hands-on way to help your students build their understanding of capacity concepts? Our Capacity Craft is the perfect interactive activity to bring measurement language to life in your classroom! Ideal for early years learners, this craft-based lesson gives students the opportunity to explore and describe capacity visually and creatively.

Through this activity, students choose how full they want their jar to be, using materials like pasta, pom poms or scrunched paper to represent quantities. Once their jar is filled, they complete the sentence ‘My jar is _______’ using mathematical language such as “full,” “nearly full,” “half full,” “nearly empty,” or “empty.” This provides a meaningful and visual way to explore how measurement terms relate to real-world quantities.

Capacity Craft makes a great addition to your measurement unit, helping students become confident using comparison language and providing a bright, tactile classroom display. The range of colour and black & white template options gives you flexibility to suit your class needs and printing preferences.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• ✅ Use appropriate mathematical vocabulary to describe capacity
• ✅ Explore and compare informal measurements through visual representation
• ✅ Make connections between volume and descriptive language
• ✅ Strengthen fine motor skills through cutting, gluing, and crafting
• ✅ Develop confidence in expressing mathematical observations verbally and in writing

What’s Included:

• Jar templates in multiple fullness levels
• Black & white and colour versions for flexible printing
• Label prompts to support sentence writing (‘My jar is _______’)

Materials Needed:

• Printed jar templates (black & white on coloured card looks fantastic!)
• Craft materials – pom poms, dry pasta, crepe paper, buttons, sequins, etc.
• Glue sticks
• Scissors
• Pencils or markers for writing sentence prompts
• Optional: laminator to preserve jars as a classroom display or reusability tool

How to Use:

1. Introduce and discuss the key capacity terms with your class
2. Show sample jars that match each level of fullness (using real containers if possible)
3. Distribute templates and provide a variety of craft items for students to fill their jars
4. Students glue their materials onto the jar to represent a level of fullness
5. Students write the sentence “My jar is _______” choosing the correct term
6. Display completed jars on a measurement wall or classroom window

Ideas for Classroom Use:

• 💡 Use as a warm-up or consolidation activity during your capacity unit
• 💡 Set up as a measurement station in rotations with other hands-on capacity tasks
• 💡 Integrate with oral language by asking students to present their jars to the class
• 💡 Pair with real jars or containers and matching labels to compare abstract and concrete versions
• 💡 Use as a pre-assessment or post-assessment to track vocabulary understanding

Top Teacher Tips:

• 💛 Provide sentence starters and vocabulary visuals to support early writers
• 💛 Offer varied materials to promote creativity and engage different learners
• 💛 Print on coloured cardstock for extra visual impact and durability
• 💛 Encourage students to work in pairs and discuss their capacity choices using maths talk

Capacity Craft is a creative, hands-on way to bring measurement language to life in your classroom – sparking curiosity and confidence while building core numeracy skills.