What is 'Capacity'?

Today we had some fun measuring the capacity of different containers using water, sand and rice. Our goal was to find the containers with the greatest capacity. We did this in several steps. 

First we measured our base container (an unused lunch box) by counting the number of scoops it took to fill:

Next, we compared the capacity of the lunch box with the capacity of other containers by pouring the water, sand or rice from one container to the next. Benita told us that if the container we were pouring our sand, water or rice into was smaller than the lunch box it would overflow. 

Lastly, we counted the number of scoops it takes to fill the containers. Isabella told us that the container with the largest capacity is the one that took the most scoops to fill.