Aliens Have Invaded! Area and Perimeter

Even though we finished up our space unit a few weeks ago, we still needed a biittt longer to banish the aliens finish up our alien area and perimeter unit. Area and perimeter of rectangles/squares is something that was pretty easy for the kids to understand, but it opens up a WHOLE new world for them and for our classroom discussions. 

Throughout this exploration we were connecting our knowledge of multiplication, repeated addition, the commutative property, 2-D shapes, fractions of shapes, adding fractions, adding number strings and subtracting to find the difference. The kids' math vocabulary was flying through the room! I love these moments when all their learning just "clicks." 

Love seeing some addition strategies being used! 

We started off by learning that {ahh! the horror!} we'd been invaded by some very picky moon men.  We'd been studying the moon for quite some time, so it wasn't a big stretch. :) First, we had to design a spaceship so they could get back to the moon as fast as possible. 

 

Using the partial boxes led to a fun discussion about halves and adding fractions. 

It was going to take quite some time for the aliens' ship to be built, so we had to pick out a fenced in area for them. To do this we had to figure out the amount of space they'd want (moon men like to be close to each other, so we had to pick the smallest area we could). 

 

We then discussed some perimeter options, including both perimeter of rectangles and non-standard shapes. I was blown away by how quickly they caught on! 

At first I'd mentioned to the class that perimeter can be tricky, because it may seem like we're counting the corner tiles "twice", because we count two sides of the corner tiles. They quickly came up with this solution - measure using the outside! 

We ended with a culminating CHALLENGE problem - to design an area with the maximum amount of perimeter (so the aliens could hang their art) and the smallest amount of area. Their ideas were AWESOME!

One student quickly saw the best way to maximize the difference between his perimeter and area was to figure out how to have as many boxes as possible alone, without touching any of the other boxes. He didn't quite come up with the idea of a diagonal line, but he was close! 

 

This was a fun and pretty low-prep unit for me. Thanks, aliens. ;)  Up next: geometry (shew!). 

If you're interested in buying this unit - stop by my TpT store! 

Moon Bouncing

We just started learning about the moon a few weeks ago, and this week I hit upon an idea that has been SO fun. We began fighting an epic battle against the MOON MONSTER! :) The Moon Monster is an evil rumor- spreader who wants to tarnish the moon's good name. If you're interested in buying this activity, purchase here. 

So ... we sorted the fact from the fiction {at least, what we thought was the fact and fiction}. This sort is part of a larger moon rumors unit I'm working on, but for now the bouncing activity is up and ready on TpT!





















And ... jumped right into {literally} as we fought to show the moon DOES have gravity {contrary to popular opinion}.

We moon bounced, and then did several follow up activities tied to our mathematics unit - we first measured the length of our jumps (some groups measured to the nearest inch, some to the nearest half and inch, and some to the nearest fourth of an inch), then added up our measurements to find the total. This gave us valuable practice adding with expanded form, some pre-teaching of adding fractions and converting measurements from inches to feet.





Don't you love it when something you've planned builds on many more skills than you initially planned? I was happy with integrating math and science, but MAN - when we started adding fractions and practicing converting those 16 inches to feet + inches .... my teaching heart SANG. :)

Finally - some of us used multiplication to practice finding out how far we would have bounced (3x the distance), and an imaginary planet where the gravity is 22x weaker than Earth!











By the time we were done, one of my sweet boys gave me the ultimate compliment - "This was math?!" Misson: accomplished. :)