How Does Measuring Length in Centimetres Work?

Measuring length in centimetres is like counting how many small steps it takes to walk from one end of a toy to the other.

Imagine you have a ruler that looks like a tiny ladder, each rung on this ladder is 1 centimetre long. When you want to know how long something is, you line up the start of the object with the first rung (that’s 0 centimetres), and then count how many rungs it takes to reach the end.

Think about building blocks, each one is roughly 1 centimetre tall. If a pencil is as tall as five blocks stacked together, that means it's about 5 centimetres long.

You can use your ruler or any straight object with evenly spaced marks to measure things around you, like your finger, a book, or even the length of your desk!

If you're measuring something longer than your ruler, you just keep going and add up all the centimetres, it's like counting how many blocks it takes to reach across the room.