Area, Perimeter and Quilts

I see quilt patterns everywhere I go.  I have mentioned before that I see block patterns in tile, flower beds, wallpaper, sidewalks, books on a shelf etc.  You can imagine my delight when my students start seeing quilts in things.

We were working hard in math class today measuring perimeter and figuring the area of squares and rectangles.  After much work, we did an activity making arrays ( ie a 12x7 array would have 12 rows with 7 in each row ) on a large grid graph paper.  After correctly creating the array, labeling it, figuring the perimeter and area --- I teach second graders so this was alot for them to do...they all did a great job and thought this was alot of fun --- I told them they could color their arrays (this, of course, helped keep them all busy and reasonably quiet while giving me the chance to check everyone's work!)  One student asked if they could color anyway they wanted.  I said they could.  Another asked if she could make hers look like quilts.  Of course I said yes.  Before I knew it, most of my 28 (yes 28) second graders were "designing" their quilts!!!

This led to another activity!  We figured out how many quilt blocks we would need for a quilt top of a certain area then figured out the perimeter so we could add a border!!! This was a delightful math lesson.  This will all come in handy very soon as it is close to the end of the year when we will be making our classroom quilt to raffle on the last day of school.

I love when I can bring quilting into my classroom.  It was a treat for the children to be so excited that they brought quilting into our classroom today!!!

Happy Quilting,
Laurel