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Grab your Free Guide - 3 sTEps to stem success

Can you Find the Area of Your Home Sweet Home?

Do you have a fabulous way to get students to remember the difference between area and perimeter? 
If you are like me you know all the tricks! But, if you still need some ideas, stick with this post- especially because there’s a free activity hidden in it somewhere!
STEM Math Challenge FREEBIE! Students design their Home Sweet Home using grid paper and a set of rules. They must have 15 rooms and calculate the area of each as they draw. In the end, they calculate the total cost of the home! Using the total square units they use a predetermined number to find the home's cost. The forms are editable! This FREE resource helps students practice finding area, addition, multiplication, and more!

Trick #1 – Word Play

I know you love to make anchor charts and if you want some ideas for area and perimeter just head to Pinterest and you will find about a bajillion just for this topic.

Here’s what I used to drill into my third graders (and still do):

  1. Per – RIM – eter is the distance around the rim.
  2. Area is like an area rug- it covers the whole area.
I wish I had an image of a great anchor chart to share with that! #pinterest

Trick #2 – Tape on the Floor

This is a hands-on or feet-on activity that my third graders loved! I used blue painter’s tape and created shapes on the tile floor. Then I would show the kids how to walk around the RIM of the shape to find the perimeter and count each edge of the square tiles.
Then we would step on every square inside the shape to find the area. I have room to make about ten of these shapes on my lab floor and the kids rotate until they have found the area and perimeter of every shape!

Exploring Area and Perimeter

We use two STEM Challenges that feature area and perimeter. 

STEM Challenge- Explore with perimeter and area and then design a dog yard! Uses grid paper and construction paper and lots of fun!

At the beginning of the first activity, students must find all of the ways to make a shape using a given perimeter. They work together to draw rectangles and label them with the perimeters. At the end of this challenge, the students design a miniature dog run. I have a whole blog post devoted to this and the design part of the challenge. It includes the photos above and below!

STEM Challenge: Using grid paper and markers students must design a floor plan for the ultimate dog house. The rules of the STEM Task are very strict. Students must stay within a specific area and use three polygons to create the floor plan!
In the second activity, students find 10 polygons that meet certain criteria. Then they have to choose three of them and join them together to design the floor plan of a doghouse. The arrangement of the polygons has really tough design rules which include where the polygons can touch and what the final area can be. This one is really challenging, but my older students love it.
Click to see the blog post with a few more details! >>>>>>> AREA AND PERIMETER

Design a Home

This is an activity I have tried in many different ways. Basically, students take a grid sheet and draw a floor plan. They must name each room and note the area of each.

Here’s the problem- Kids dream big! They create rooms like basketball courts, roller coasters, and restaurants – inside the houses. Which is fun, but is it realistic?

So, I added some requirements to the task. There are nine required rooms and they can create up to 15 rooms. Take a look!

STEM Math Challenge FREEBIE! Students design their Home Sweet Home using grid paper and a set of rules. They must have 15 rooms and calculate the area of each as they draw. In the end, they calculate the total cost of the home! Using the total square units they use a predetermined number to find the home's cost. The forms are editable! This FREE resource helps students practice finding area, addition, multiplication, and more!
Each student has a data table on which to record their room measurements and area of each room. They draw the room on the grid sheet, record its dimensions, label it, and repeat until the sheet is filled. Many of them will fill the entire page, while some create tiny house plans.
STEM Math Challenge FREEBIE! Students design their Home Sweet Home using grid paper and a set of rules. They must have 15 rooms and calculate the area of each as they draw. In the end, they calculate the total cost of the home! Using the total square units they use a predetermined number to find the home's cost. The forms are editable! This FREE resource helps students practice finding area, addition, multiplication, and more!
They can still add those fabulous rooms like indoor pools. Notice in the above photo that the young lady has a library that is larger than a bedroom!
STEM Math Challenge FREEBIE! Students design their Home Sweet Home using grid paper and a set of rules. They must have 15 rooms and calculate the area of each as they draw. In the end, they calculate the total cost of the home! Using the total square units they use a predetermined number to find the home's cost. The forms are editable! This FREE resource helps students practice finding area, addition, multiplication, and more!
Here’s where the task gets really interesting! After finding all the rooms they have space for they must add to find the total area. Now, we multiply the total area by a dollar amount to find the cost of the house! I used a made up number of $252 per square unit. Most of my students end up with homes that cost from $150 to $180 thousand. They think it’s an astronomical amount.
They also have basketball courts inside a home for $165,000- which sadly, is not likely to ever happen!

It’s such a fun activity using tons of math.

(And it is available for you in two ways!)

STEM Math Challenge FREEBIE! Students design their Home Sweet Home using grid paper and a set of rules. They must have 15 rooms and calculate the area of each as they draw. In the end, they calculate the total cost of the home! Using the total square units they use a predetermined number to find the home's cost. The forms are editable! This FREE resource helps students practice finding area, addition, multiplication, and more!

Comments

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