Chosen mathematics concepts and their understanding by students of early school education ‒ the concept of measure and measurement

The early school education stage is a particularly important period, in which the child has possibility to confront colloquial and formal knowledge. An important area of such confrontation is the so-called practical information and skills, including the concept of measure and measuring ability. At the elementary level the child passes from colloquial knowledge of measurement to formal knowledge and starts to understand the interrelationships between various measures. One of the basic threats in shaping the concept of measure in children is too early formalization of knowledge. The article presents the results of the pilot studies regarding the understanding by 7‒9 year old children the sense of measuring continuous magnitudes such as: length, volume, mass, time, temperature and surface area. On the basis of the results, it was found that the most difficulties for children is to measure mass, volume and surface area. Basically, the studied group does not understand the importance of balance on the beam balance, so they cannot determine the result of mass measurement. Based on the observation it was noticed that children mostly associate the measuring activity with length and special tools. They are not aware that we can measure with any chosen units and that we can measure different continuous magnitudes.