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.

Area - Island Conquer

For students to practice their area skills, my students played Island Conquer (created by Laura Candler). Students work in partners, chose colors, and draw cards with coordinates. The students take turns creating rectangles from the coordinates and figure the area. After all the coordinates cards have been drawn, students find out which partner conquered more of the island.

Area - Dream Home

My students are LOVING learning about area. We created an anchor chart together to remember that area means the inside of a shape or the top/surface of an object. Then, we got a little creative with our math! I got this great lesson from Blair Turner on TpT, called Dream Home. The students get to design their own dream home with whatever rooms they would like. I had my students find the area of each of their rooms and write it on the back of the papers. They got very creative with their houses!

 

My example :)

 

Find the Area!

To practice their area skills, the students played Island Conquer. It was such a fun game! The students even practiced their coordinate grid skills to create their mini islands. To play, the students draw cards that have coordinates to create a box. The students found the area of their island and earned that many "points". Then their partner had a chance to go. The game is different every time!