Surface Area and Volume- Skin and Guts

Today we did one of my favorite activities- Skin and Guts.  It is from an AIMS book- Effects of Changing Lengths.  I love AIMS products and I highly suggest checking them out if you haven’t already.

The kids are given nets of 3 rectangular prisms.  They create 3 people- One Man, Two Man, and Three Man.

In groups the kids measured the height of each man, the belt length of each man, the area of the face of each man, the area of the skins (surface area), and the guts (volume).  Then they looked at the scale factors of the length measurements (height and belt length) vs the area measurements (area of face and skins) vs the body measurements (guts). 

I love this activity because the kids get hands on measuring experience and they can visualize how changing one dimension vs two dimensions vs three dimensions really changes the numbers. 

I also had one of those great teaching days when I felt like so many connections were made and the kids were working on an activity that provided them with exactly the right amount of challenge that they could handle but yet kept them interested and working.  So many kids told me how much they loved this activity, which is also a plus!