Who is the Heaviest?
Written by John Carr
Illustrations by Astrid Matijasevic
The Story
The story compares
animals and invites
children to decide which
one is the heaviest.
Introduction
• Give the children a selection of things to hold in each hand. Ask them
to decide which one is heavier each time.
• Introduce the story Who is the Heaviest? Talk about what the animals
are sitting on. Ask the children if they have been on a seesaw. Talk
about how a seesaw works.
• Ask the children what animal they think might be heavier than a
butterfly.
• Look at the illustrations on each page, asking the children to say which
animal they think is the lightest and heaviest. Ask them to explain their
answers. Ask what other animals might be heavier/lighter than the ones
on the page.
Read the story together.
• On a chart with two columns make a list of animals that are heavy and
animals that are light.
Follow-up Activities
Selecting
Children choose one object in the classroom to bring to the mat. They
put it down then go and find one thing that is lighter and one thing that
is heavier than the object.
Make a Seesaw
Children select two animals from the chart and decide which is the
heavier and lighter. Give the children paper rectangles to glue in the
shape of a seesaw. Draw the two animals and place them on the seesaw
with one side up and one side down. Write a sentence following the
pattern in the book.
Process
• Sort by weight
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© Wendy Pye Publishing Ltd 2011
Using the Online Activities
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Activity 1 – Who is Heavier?
Find out which animal is the heaviest and which ones weigh the same
by clicking on the animals.
As a follow-up, give the children some plastic animals, a length of wood
and a semi-circular block. Children find out which animal on the seesaw
is heavier.
Activity 2 – How Heavy is a Book?
Help Number Cruncher find out how heavy his book is by clicking on
objects to put them on the seesaw. At the end of the activity, group
objects which weigh more than or less than the book.
As a follow-up, draw a chart with objects on seesaws. Children draw an
arrow to show the end of the seesaw that would go up or down.
Activity 3 – Bungy Jumping Aliens
Five different-sized aliens jump off a platform. Who is the heaviest? Who
will get dunked in the water?
As a follow-up, each child draws an alien and cuts it out. They work
together to line them up from lightest to heaviest.
Game – Get Number Cruncher out of the Mine
Number Cruncher is in a mine shaft. Place things on seesaws to get him
across a path. Finally, put the correct number of boulders in a bucket to
act as a pulley to get him out of the mine.
Other Activities
People in my Family
Children draw the people in their family in order from the heaviest to
the lightest.
Comparing
Give the children a bag of sand and a selection of objects. They compare
one object at a time with the sand and group them as heavier or lighter.
Maths Concept
Comparison of
weight, lightest to
heaviest
Maths Language
weigh
weighs
heavy
light
heavier
lighter
heaviest
lightest
up
down
more than
less than
Searching
Children cut up pictures from magazines of things that are light and
heavy. Make a “Heavy Things” and a “Light Things” booklet. Write a
sentence for each picture such as A car is heavy.
© Wendy Pye Publishing Ltd 2011
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