You know how, sometimes, you go to find something on the internet, and it's nowhere to be found? That was me today!
I needed a small activity for my Ancient History students to do if they were done with making their Roman leather pouches. So, I went looking in my copy of "
Classical Kids: An Activity Guide to Live in Ancient Greece and Rome" by Laurie Carlson. There was a page in there about making a hodometer, like the ancient Romans might have used to measure houses and roads. This seemed like a great idea...but I didn't want to deal with the innacuracy of using string and pencils to make a circle. And, I wanted it to have handy little inch divisions.
I thought, for sure, there must already be a printable for making a hodometer. Little did I know, I wouldn't find one, and that these things are called by many names: Odometer, measuring wheel, surveyor's wheel, trundle wheel, perambulator, waywiser, and more! In the end, I found a circle divided into 12 sections and scaled it in photoshop to have a diameter of 3.82 (to give it a circumference of 24 inches), then I added in numbers. I printed it out, cut it out, and rolled it along a ruler, and it sure seems to work pretty well. I wouldn't consider it perfectly accurate--especially over long distances-- but it should work great for kids!
I figured I'm probably not the only one in the world wanting one of these and not wanting to have to draw it out and do all the measurements, so I posted it here for anyone else who wants/needs to use it!
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