Area is often a difficult substrand to photograph. Renovating a kitchen is a wonderful opportunity for Stage 3 students to see maths in real-life. And tiling the kitchen walls is a great way to think about many aspects of area.
How do you work out the area of each wall? What part of that area will need tiles (lots of Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction). Once you have your area worked out for one wall you then need to calculate the dimensions for any other wall too. What is the total area you want to tile? If you add an extra 10% for breakages and extra, how will you calculate your 10%?
And what about cost? What budget can you afford? If the tiles are $40 for one square metre, what is the total cost for your tiles? Do you need to round up or down to place your final order?
Often tile shops want you to buy by the box, not the square metre. If one box contains 1.5 square metres of tiles, how many boxes will you need?
And what about the cost of the tiler? If a tiler charges $75 to tile one square metre, how much money do you need to pay them for your job? Can you afford this?
Is it better to just paint the wall? Then you need to repeat all your calculations but using the cost of paint this time. If you need two coats and 1 litre does 15 square metres, how much paint will you need?
You can find more AREA Mental Maths Warm-ups here.
You can find suggested AREA Classroom Activities here.
You can find useful AREA Photographs here.
You can find useful AREA Graphics here.