Name Area and Perimeter

Grid Paper Name Area and Perimeter

Name Area and Perimeter- As my third graders were working on learning area and perimeter I had the children design their names on grid paper. As they made their names tracing the outline of squares on grid paper, they colored the squares in and traced with either marker or black crayon around the letters. We had just finished learning about the section on perimeter and moved on to area. I suggested that they only use the full squares, as we had not yet learned how to estimate using the partial squares for area. I  used half inch grid paper so it was large enough to work with.

The children were then were asked to find the perimeter of each letter, and then their whole name. The same thing was asked of them to find the area of each letter and then the whole name. It was a great way to reinforce the concept of finding perimeter, and learning the new concept of area.

We then compared our names to see if any names had the same area and perimeter. It was interesting to see how shocked they were to find other students with different names but had the same area and/or perimeter.

Patterns to find Name Area and Perimeter

Another idea that could have been done was to have them color their names in patterns, such as a,b,a,b, where “a” is red and “b” is blue. They can find the fraction of red and the fraction of blue squares, either for area or just plain fractions of a set.

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area and perimeter mosaic self portraits

I just saw a post on http://iwanttobeasuperteacher.blogspot.com/2012/05/perimeter-area-and-fraction-math.html I Want to be a Super Teacher blog about making a mosaic using colored construction paper self portraits and finding the name area and perimeter of these pictures. How adorable is that?

My school does not have bulletin boards, but this name area and perimeter project would have been a great bulletin board! Student learning in action!!!

Name Area and Perimeter- see sample below.

Sample of Name Area and perimeter

name area and perimeter

Name Area and Perimeter

This image showing name area and perimeter was borrowed from: http://buggyforsecondgrade.blogspot.ca/2012/04/homophones-area-and-rocks-oh-my.html

Here is a link to a game that explains area and perimeter: http://www.bgfl.org/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/perimeter_and_area/index.html

How have you used area and perimeter in your classroom? Please share so we can add to our growing list of ideas.