• Guess which animal's footprint will have the same area as yours. Discuss.
• Here are some footprints of animals - in actual sizes. Guess the area of their footprints

    

     

At this stage children need not count each square. Encourage them to identify the largest squares and rectangles within a footprint to know their area and then count small squares for irregular shapes. Though area of a rectangle will be done in chapter 11, some children may discover themselves that they can find the area faster through multiplication.

How Many Squares in Me?

 

  

In this exercise children are expected to notice the geometrical symmetry of the shapes to find out their area. Encourage children to evolve their own strategies. Rounding off is not needed in these examples.

Try Triangles

Help Sadiq in finding some more such triangles. Draw at least 5 more.

Complete the Shape

Suruchi drew two sides of a shape. She asked Asif to complete the shape with two more sides, so that its area is 10 square cm

    

• Is he correct? Discuss.
• Explain how the green area is 4 square cm and the yellow area is 6 square cm.

       

 

• Is Suruchi correct? How much is the blue area? Explain.
• Can you think of some other ways of completing the shape?
• Try some other ways yourself.
• Now ask your friends at home to solve these.

      

Practice time

1. This is one of the sides of a shape. Complete the shape so that its area is 4 square cm.

   

2. Two sides of a shape are drawn here. Complete the shape by drawing two more sides so that its area is less than 2 square cm

      

 

Children can be encouraged to make shapes with either straight edges or curved edges to cover the given area. This exercise can be extended by asking children to draw on squared paper as many shapes as they can of a given area and making guesses for the largest or the smallest perimeter. They can also be asked to check their guesses by measuring the dimensions of the shapes. In case of curved edges, thread can be used for measuring the perimete

 

    3. Here is a rectangle of area 20 square cm.

        

 

1. Draw one straight line in this rectangle to divide it into two equal triangles. What is the area of each of the triangles?
2. Draw one straight line in this rectangle to divide it into two equal rectangles. What is the area of each of the smaller rectangles?
3. Draw two straight lines in this rectangle to divide it into one rectangle and two equal triangles.
   • What is the area of the rectangle?
   • What is the area of each of the triangles?

Puzzles with Five Squares

    

Did you get all the 12 shapes using 5 squares?

Draw all the 12 shapes on a sheet of cardboard and cut them.

Try to arrange your 12 shapes in some other way to make a 10 * 6 rectangle. Could you do it?

Try another puzzle

You have to make a 5*12 rectangle with these 12 shapes. There are more than 1000 ways to do it. If you can find even one, that's great!

Game Time

Here is a chessboard. Play this game with your partner, with one set of 12 shapes.

The first player picks one shape from the set and puts it on the board covering any five squares.

The other player picks another shape and puts it on the board, but it must not overlap the first shape.

Keep taking turns until one of you can't go any further.

Whoever puts the last piece wins!

Make Your Own Tile

Remember the floor patterns in Math-Magic Book 4 (pages117-119). You had to choose the correct tile which could be repeated to make a pattern so that there were no gaps left.

Encourage children to try to do these 'pentomino' puzzles at home. Such exercises can be designed for shapes with 6 squares (hexominoes) in which case there will be 35 different shapes possible.

Ziri went to a shop and was surprised to see the different designs of tiles on the floor.
Aren't these beautiful!

Can you find the tile which is repeated to make each of these floor patterns?
Circle a tile in each pattern.

After looking at the patterns Ziri wanted to make her own yellow tile. You too make a tile this way.

Step 1: Take a piece of cardboard or thick paper. Draw a square of side 3 cm on it.

Step 2: Draw a triangle on any one of the sides of this square.

Step 3: Draw another triangle of the same size on another side of the square. But this time draw it inside the square.

Step 4: Cut this shape from the cardboard. Your tile is ready! What is it's area?

Make a pattern using your tile. Trace the shape to repeat it on a page, but remember there must be no gaps between them.

Ziri made a pattern using her yellow tiles.(You know the area of her tile.)

• How many tiles has she used?
• What is the area of the floor pattern Ziri has made here?

 Practice time

Ziri tried to make some other tiles. She started with a square of 2 cm side and made shapes like these.
Look at these carefully and find out:

• Which of these shapes will tile a floor (without any gaps)? Discuss. What is the area of these shapes?
• Make designs in your copy by tiling those shapes.
• Now you create your own new tiles out of a square. Can you do the same with a triangle? Try doing it.

In Class III and IV basic shapes like squares, rectangles, hexagons, triangles, circles etc were used to examine which of those can tile and which do not tile to make floor patterns. Children must now be able to modify basic shapes to create different tiling shapes. In the exercise above they may create new shapes out of a square that do not tile even though their area remains the same as that of the square from which they are made.