Area and Perimeter Games for 4th Graders

Significance of Mathematics

Mathematics is a subject that is necessary for functioning adequately in society. More than that, mathematics is a subject that should be more enjoyable than it comes across as. Appreciation and enjoyment of mathematics coupled with the task of nurturing children’s confidence in their ability to apply their mathematical knowledge to solve real-life problems is a challenge facing every parent today.

Parents’ attitudes toward mathematics have an impact on children’s attitudes. Children whose parents show an interest in and enthusiasm for mathematics around the home will be more likely to develop that enthusiasm themselves. The enthusiasm also builds up if parents communicate the importance of mathematics to their children and become more involved in their children’s mathematical education.

Role of Math Games and Activities

• Math games help in building strategic thinking. Strategic thinking is one of the most important skills for children to develop. It requires the ability to observe, gather information, plan and analyze possible solutions, and choose the appropriate action. Strategic thinking is a way to solve problems. Problem-solving is an essential skill in our professional, family, and social lives. Math games for kids are focused on providing engaging activities to entertain strategic mathematical thinking
• Kids learning games offer a pleasant way for parents to get involved in their children’s education. Parents don’t have to be math geniuses to play a game. They don’t have to worry about pushing or pressuring their children. All that parents must do is explain the rules of the game to their child and then start playing.
• Kids learning games are the perfect way to reinforce and extend the skills children learn at school. They are one of the most effective ways that parents can develop their child’s math skills without lecturing or applying pressure. When studying math, there’s an element of repetition that’s an important part of learning new concepts and developing automatic recall of math facts. Number facts can be boring and tedious to learn and practice. A game can generate an enormous amount of practice –math practice that does not have kids complaining about how much work they are having to do. What better way to learn all the math concepts than this!
• Educational games help children learn important mathematical skills and processes with understanding. Games also support concept development in math
• Math games promote mathematical communication and help in developing positive attitude towards math

Let us look area and perimeter games through which everyday math can be made more fun, meaningful and enjoyable for kids

ARRANGING TABLE ACTIVITY

Challenge kids with a situational problem. Ask them if there are 22 people coming to home for thanksgiving dinner, what’s the largest table required so that all can sit together on the table. Largest table is for putting maximum dishes. The table is assumed to be rectangular. Everybody must sit at the table with no overlapping, no sitting on each other’s lap. Next, you can ask kids another challenge which is that what’s the smallest table possible to arrange all the people around but occupy the least space or the smallest table because only a few dishes are made.

These challenges will take the kids to critical thinking where are and perimeter are no longer isolated topics and require parallel understanding and application.

Table 1 is of dimension 10-unit X 1 unit. Hence formula for area is 10 square units. Whereas the formula for perimeter is 10 + 1 + 10 + 1 = 22 units. So, all 22 people can sit around the table, each person occupying 1-unit space.

In table 2 the area is 6-unit X 5 unit = 30 square units whereas the perimeter is 6 + 5 + 6 + 5 = 22 units. Hence the perimeter here too is 22 units so all 22 people can sit together occupying a unit space each. But area, in this case, is larger. Hence table 2 is the table where more dishes can be displayed than table 1. Kids will work out all other possibilities to be sure that area of table 2 is maximum and area of table 1 is minimum.

FARMER CROPPING ACTIVITY

Tell kids about a farmer who has to plant maximum crops in the field and then protect these crops from other animals by fencing it too. The farmer wants to spend as little as possible on fencing and wants maximum crops to be planted in his field. How should he arrange the crops in his field?

This activity will let 4th-grade math kids to explore the area and perimeter word problems without even knowing they are doing that. Kids will recall the 3rd-grade math lessons to associate it with finding area and perimeter and recall the area and perimeter formulas.

EXPLORING PERIMETER

Show five shapes that have the same area to the children and then ask them, “Which shape has the longest perimeter?” The shapes are composed of four squares and are the same shapes as in a game called “Tetris” that children are familiar with. Interestingly, four shapes out of the five have equal perimeters. Only the square has a shorter perimeter. Why does the perimeter become shorter only for the square while all the other shapes share perimeters of the same length? Let children explore answers to these questions. This activity encourages students to look at the change in perimeters in accordance with the transformation of the shapes.

EXPLORING AREA

This exploratory activity can help students understand the concept of area as well as derive the formula of the area for various two-dimensional shapes. This is a sample worksheet and similar area worksheets with objects that are available could be created.

The informal introduction to area and perimeter through these math activities provides kids with a motivation to study the topic. They now know the importance of the topic in solving real life math problems and therefore will be curious to learn the facts and formulas related to the topic too. Once the concept is clear area and perimeter worksheets can be used to master the topic.

Perimeter and Area Basics

The perimeter of a shape is defined as the distance around the shape. The perimeter of polygons (closed plane figures whose sides are straight line segments), is calculated by just adding up the lengths of each of the sides.

It is tempting to just start adding the numbers given together for finding perimeter, but that won’t be correct. The reason that it will not is that this figure has SIX sides and we are only given four numbers. Hence, first determine the lengths of the two sides that are not labeled and then find the perimeter. Looking at the image carefully one can easily find the other two sides:

Now that we have all the lengths of the sides, the perimeter formula is:  4 + 14 + 11 + 8 + 7 + 6 = 50

The area of a shape is defined as the number of square units that cover a closed figure. For most of the shape, there is a formula for calculating the area. In some cases, shapes will be made up of more than a single shape. In calculating the area of such shapes, we can just add the area of each of the single shapes together.

For example:

This figure is not a single rectangle. It can, however, be broken up into two rectangles. Find the area of each of the rectangles and add them together to calculate the area of the whole figure.

                     

The complete figure can be broken into a red rectangle and a green rectangle. The lengths of both sides of the red rectangle are known. The area of the red rectangle is A = b × h = 4 × 14 = 56 square units

Next, find the area of the green rectangle. We know that the length of one of the sides is 8 units. Find the length of the other side of the green rectangle. The length is 7 units. (as calculated in the perimeter question above)

Thus, the area of the green rectangle is A = b × h = 8 × 7 = 56 square units. Thus, the area of the whole figure is an area of red rectangle + area of green rectangle = 56 + 56 = 112 square units.

Similarly, children can explore the area of a parallelogram and area of a trapezoid too by splitting them into rectangles or triangles.