Measuring, Counting, and Graphing...Oh My!

We have measured EVERYTHING in our rooms (and the other 3rd grade rooms)!  We did an amazing activity last Friday that I absolutely loved and have to share!  Although I wish I could, I can't take credit for the idea.  I was inspired, of course, by pinterest and another wonderful blog!  Here is a snapshot from her blog.

From Love2Teach2 Blogspot

We have been learning how to find the perimeter and area of different shapes.  As soon as I saw this on pinterest I knew I had to do this activity and persuaded invited my wonderful 3rd grade colleagues to join in!  Our principal was in on the fun too since he came to observe me the day we did this activity.  We each created 5 shapes in our rooms (unfortunately the hallway doesn't have individual tiles) for a total of 20 shapes.  Have a  peek at a couple of my shapes (we've been working on fractions too and each of us included halves in some of our figures)!

We rotated through all 4 classes and, working in groups, recorded the perimeter and area of each shape.  I loved watching them walk around the outside to count the perimeter and step on each square inside to find the area!  Hearing them talk about the halves and how two halves equal one square foot made me quite proud!  I think this activity made it more concrete and easier for them to understand!

I have a freebie to share with any of you who can use it!  This is a two page worksheet, but I have included 2 variations of the cover page to suit your needs (one for a worksheet per group or one for each student).  I chose to have each student complete a worksheet in order for everyone to have some accountability.   We completed the top of the worksheets together before beginning as a reminder for the activity.  Each student could look at their worksheet to see the definitions for perimeter and area and that one tile is one square foot!  You can download the worksheet here at google docs or from scribd!

Floor Shapes Area and Perimeter Worksheet
 

We have moved on now to counting, adding, and subtracting money.  I was pleased to see that I only had a few kiddos still struggling with identifying the coins.  Nickels and Quarters are still confusing a couple of them.  Since most of my kids can already identify the coins fairly easily, I needed a good activity to practice identification that would hold some value for everyone else.  

Thanks to Ginger Snaps Clip Art, I had just the idea!  I won her last giveaway (her WHOLE clip art shop), and needless to say, I was ecstatic!  I used her data clip art to create four different worksheets that incorporate identifying and categorizing coins, tallying the number of nickels or quarters found, and then creating a data display.  We've done so many bar graphs that I wanted to revisit graphs that we are less comfortable with so I made two pages for creating line plots and two for line graphs.  We did one side together to review how to create each data display, and then one individually!  That activity is for sale at my new TPT shop!  Here's a preview for you!

I'd love, love, love to know what you think about the items in my shop!  

Any suggestions or anything you'd like to see for sale on TPT?

   

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