Area - Shoe Lesson

The Shoe Lesson

Here's another way to get some hands on area and perimeter experience! Each student brings in a shoe of their parent, or they use their own if they happen to forget their parent's shoe. First thing, students share whose shoe it is because they love to hear what their classmates brought!

The shoe is traced on 1-inch grid paper. The students find the perimeter using either string trailed along the outline or using their pinkie finger as a centimeter measure. To find the area of the shoe, students count all the whole squares. Then comes the tricky part, students need to find part-squares to "put together" to make up a whole square.