Easy Area and Perimeter Art Project
Area and Perimeter Art Project
If you have children that love to color, they will love this area and perimeter art project. They get the joy of designing a picture, while you get to sneak in math.
When my boys were young, we did tons of art projects and fun learning activities. Fast forward a few years and I’m now homeschooling four children, all on different levels.
I’ll be completely honest and say the fun artsy stuff just doesn’t happen as much.
But this week, with the help of Math Art and Drawing Games for Kids: 40+ Fun Art Projects to Build Amazing Math Skills, we actually had a little fun with art and math this week.
Math Art Activities
My youngest is working on area and perimeter right now, so I was thrilled to see easy art math activities. (There are definitely more challenging ones in the book, but this mama decided to start small and work her way up.)
The premise of the activity is simple. Have children draw shapes on dot paper, and then figure out the area and perimeter of them.
Drawing Time:
- First, came the fun part. I simply handed each child a ruler, a pencil, and paper with dots on it.
- Next, I asked them to draw shapes on them. I encouraged them to have triangles, rectangles, trapezoids, and more.
- Once the shapes were drawn, I let them get to coloring. I don’t know what is so calming about this part, but I loved watching the peacefulness and calming effect this step had.
- Finally, I had them write the letters A, B, C, and D in four of the shapes. You could do more, but this was all I planned on having them work through for the day.
How to Find the Area
Now came the math part. Figuring out the area of different shapes.
My oldest had chosen a triangle, and thankfully he was able to recall the area of a triangle due to our classical-based memory work.
He jotted down the formula and was quickly able to insert the correct numbers in the algebraic expression he had created.
We then moved on to finding the area of a hexagon. And I’ll be honest here. I had to look up the formula for this one!
Did you know that the formula for finding the area of a hexagon is to add the two bases together, then multiply by the height, and finally divide by two?
What fun! I love learning new things!
The last shape we worked on was the most fun. He had chosen a hexagon. Now there may be a formula for finding the area of a hexagon, but I choose to present it to him in a different way.
I asked him to find shapes inside the hexagon so that he knew how to find the area too. He quickly saw that there was a rectangle and two trapezoids in his shape… and he went to work.
I love watching my boys face a challenge, and come up with different solutions…..and this activity allowed us to explore, draw, and get in some math that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Area and Perimeter Art Project
I know I want to add fun crafts and activities to our math time. But if you’re anything like me, I don’t have the creativity to add art to math time.
And because of this, I’m in love with this book. With 40 activities, I can easily add art to my math time with little thought on my part.
There are activities to work on symmetry, graphs, grids, and geometry.
These hands-on activities are sure to add excitement to your math time and spark joy in your art lovers.
Enjoy this art and math activity.
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