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Description

Make the young people count rice to understand the scale of various issues.

Resources

Digital kitchen scales.
At least 5 kilos of dry rice - depending on your statistics.
Felt tip pens
Paper plates
Scrap paper

Instructions

Research various numbers linked to an activity or event.

Examples could be -
The number of names on the Town War Memorial - especially relevant around Remembrance Day
The number of calories in various foods - both healthy and not-so-healthy for the Skills badge
The amount of money that the local council spends on litter collection etc for Environmental Conservation
The number of people that needed hospital treatment due to fireworks/traffic accidents etc etc.

Ask the participants to guess the number, write it on the plate, and then put that many grains of rice on the plate to signify a person/calorie/pound etc.

Start with small numbers - so the calories in a tangerine (approx 50), comes before Big Mac meal with milkshake (1,500+)

50 grains of rice weigh 1g. and so a kilo is about 50,000 grains. Make sure that you only open one bag!

If you can't get a number that can be rounded to 50 then count out 50 before you begin and put them to one side.

Ideally when they have done a couple of plates they will work out that it is easier to weigh rice for the big numbers than it is to count it (problem-solving part of Skills). You may have to steer them towards this...

Once you have got them to do several plates you can then use the numbers as the basis for the rest of the evening's programme - as in what can they do to increase/decrease the numbers as appropriate. It is especially effective when you compare plates.

Tags

• introduction to other activities
• Problem solving
• rice

Badge Links

• Skills - Problem solving
• Teamwork - Team-building