Round and Round the Garden - Area and Perimeter

Gardening is of course just one of several ways a sound understanding of area and perimeter can be put to good use. And of course, what's mathematics without some horticulture thrown in for good measure? Below you will find several different projects for teaching area and perimeter, including additional slides to help teachers and students create more excersizes for their own classrooms. We have more in mind to come, but here are the first four. There's just so many ways to teach area!

Unit by unit area measurement - https://app.box.com/s/381op67m5zanmgsdbs4a
Students use single square units to fill in the area of images on different slides, counting them individually. The first slide focuses on simple rectangles while the second introduces some shapes with twists and turns.

Filling a Garden - https://app.box.com/s/i50i3y6xi1rthm73dm4k
Two types of problems are presented here. The first is another unit by unit fill in excersize. Afterwards, students are challenged to create gardens using images of tomato, eggplant, caggabe and broccoli plants. And don't worry - all four plants require roughly 1 square foot of space to grow so students can stack them along side each other as equal units.

Non-standard Triangle unit measurement - https://app.box.com/s/rnudthm3tti8h9axfek7
Instead of squares, this excersize challenges students to measure a variety of shapes using equilateral triangles. This excersize can also help facilitate a discussion about the relationships between triangles and parellelograms or hexagons

Grid block measuring - https://app.box.com/s/9fi0vgchzcsicmwotuee
Instead of measuring unit by unit, students are encouraged to measure irregular shaped objects by using colour coded grids of single unit blocks to isolate sections. The extra slides at the end of the project enable students and teachers to make additional problems.

Area Pond - https://app.box.com/s/a1hirv57u5c6057x7j4e
Here students can look at the relationship between area and volume by filling a pond with fish, lily pads and ducks! By locking the scale of  each item, they can compare how many fish, lily pads or ducks are needed to fill the pond. Possible questions include:
Which unit of measure do you think makes the best indication of pond size? Why?
If you knew the depth of the pond, how would you calculate the ponds volume?