Today Aiden and I pulled some problems from the textbook to get practice on Surface Area. We started with a problem where Aiden had to describe how one would find out how much paint they'd need to paint a house, if one bucket held 24sq.ft. Aiden determined they would need to find the entire surface area and then divide by 24. I asked Aiden, "What if you got 11.6, how many buckets would you need to buy?" He said, "12 and then we would just have a little left over." He was spot on. Next, we looked at a parcel of land with random dimensions given. Aiden had to determine the dimensions of the missing sides, "cut up" the space into several regions, and then determine the area of each. We discussed the different formulas we would need for triangle, square and rectangle. Aiden easily found each individual area and added them to find the total area. Lastly, Aiden had to consider the surface area a rectangular stage would be if all sides were covered except the bottom side. He computed each face, multiplied by 2 for the faces that were doubled, and then added them all together. He did a great job!
Today was Carson's last day with us. Instead of having a traditional math class, today we worked on puzzles, riddles, and logic. I showed him pictures of multiple squares and asked him to count how many he saw. He realized that multiple squares could be created beyond what its obvious. Next we considered riddles regarding age and probabilities. We also looked at photos that initially you see one way, but when you look at it again with a different perspective you can see something different.
It's been a pleasure working with Carson this year!
