Area and Perimeter

Okay so I did this lesson so long ago, but I had no time to post about. For my observation, the one that has to hit like 12 intense indicators in Tennessee wonderful evaluation system, I did this lesson on area and perimeter. Now keep in mind this is after I had taught both concepts. This lesson is purely to practice, teach real world application, and to help relate the concepts to the students.

First you have to start with the book, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. It is a wonderful book about a dreary town. The little boy finds a plant, and it eventually becomes this amazing roof top garden.

I scanned mine and put it into a smart board software so that it would be large, but you could also read it aloud regularly, or scan an put it into PowerPoint for large easy flipping.

After that My students planned a rooftop garden for a roof here in Nashvegas in Nashville, then then had to figure out the area and perimeter for each different plant plot in their garden. As an extension, the students had a seed and fencing catalog that I made up. They had to figure out how many packages of seeds they would need to make their garden.

Finally, in Tennessee every lesson must have an extended writing piece, yes I said extended, so the students worked on writing letters to Lowe's asking for donations for the supplies they received. Here is one of the finished products, sorry there is only one, but I hand this back ages ago. So this is the only child I still had one that I could take a picture of.

I took her name off that is why the return address looks so sloppy, sorry.

I know it sounds kind of complicated, but it was really quite easy to create the sheets, and my students loved it. My dream is to do it with a class with vegetables and make it a community project were we donate the vegetables to local food banks.

Hope you can use this with your kids and I love to hear your ideas about it! As always thanks for reading!

May