Area Perimeter and Volume Lessons

This week (and a little of last week) have been spent on Area, Perimeter and Volume.
The first lesson we did is based on a little story I wrote that involves two penguins. One penguin is making a nest for his wife. He has specific guidelines he must follow in order to make the perfect nest. He keeps messing up the specific guidelines so the story encourages the students to make the perfect nest. The kids loved the little story and they worked together with their shoulder partner to figure out the dimensions of the perfect nest.

After the story, students were given a set of “nest” task cards and graph paper. Students worked in pairs to figure out how to make each nest according to the specific areas and perimeters given. I love how they have to work backwards to figure out the sides of the nests.

This activity can be found in my TpT store and contains a powerpoint of the story and activity plus nest building task cards. Last year I did this same activity but instead of using graph paper we built nests out in the hall using the tiles. This year I was in a time crunch so we stayed in the room and completed multiple nests on graph paper. I really like the graph paper better because students got more work completed then out in the hall. Here is the activity if you would like to do this in your own classroom!

Next we did some problem solving with a Google Interactive activity I designed. This activity not only allowed students to practice their problem solving skills and find missing sides but also allowed them to use a digital ruler. I love how they love technology!

Here is the link to the Google Project at more store. Check out the other Google Projects I have made!

We then moved onto volume. I love to teach volume! I first make kids build rectangular prisms. They spend like 30 min making perfect beautiful rectangular prisms out of linking cubes. Then when they are done I say, how many cubes is that? They are stunned. You didn’t tell me I had to count??? They very quickly start multiplying the length times width times the number of layers. They do this instinctively. I immediately tell them that they just discovered the formula for volume!

Afterwards I planned some Volume Stations were kids can practice different problem solving situations. One of the stations I designed is focusing on V=Bh formula. The students used QR codes to receive immediate feedback.

Here is a link of the V = Bh task cards.

We also measured real life boxes and found the volume.

Finally students completed another Google project on volume. Here are a few slides:

Here is the link to this Google Project on Volume!

Next week I will be wrapping up my curriculum!!!! Our last topic is Balancing a Simple Budget!