Summer SAVY 2017, Session 4/Day 4- Measuring Matters (Rising 2nd/3rd)
Today was all about area!
We started off with the standard area formula: A = L x W. We talked about area’s relationship to perimeter and how two shapes with the same perimeter can have different areas. At first, the kids were convinced that this couldn’t be true, so it was fun to see them take a certain perimeter value and manipulate it to create different sized spaces. We then moved on to finding the area of large shapes by partitioning them – or breaking them down into more manageable pieces. For instance, if you have a 35 x 7 rectangle, you can break that down into three 10 x 7’s and one 5 x 7, which makes it easier to solve in your head. From there, we went to calculating the area of odd shapes on grid paper. We worked with triangles, trapezoids, and crosses, to name a few. We partitioned them, and we counted up the half squares and divided those by 2 to determine the number of full squares they made. It was fascinating to watch all the different ways the kids broke up their shapes to more easily find the area. The kids were able to take all of this knowledge and put it to work on their “Dream Caves”. For this mini-project, the kids were tasked with designing a cave for their Yeti. It had to have 10 rooms, and at least five of them had to be odd shaped. The kids got really creative! We had sledding rooms, spas (because Yeti’s need massages – or so I was told!), ice cream parlors, gyms, and the list goes on and on. The kids had to draw the blueprints out on grid paper, calculate the area of each room, calculate the area of the entire cave, and calculate the perimeter of the cave. We were not able to finish these, so we will spend the bulk of our time tomorrow getting these wrapped up. I also hope to squeeze in some more area challenges – for example, when given the area and perimeter of a rectangle, find the length and the width.
Ms. Catherine Shull
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