Contributor: Lanette Judy. Lesson ID: 14136
Playing in the sand is a blast, just like discovering the area of a rectangle! What do you love to build in the sand? Discover how measuring space can be just as exciting!
Imagine you’re at the park and want to build a giant sandbox to hang out with all your friends. You want it to be a perfect rectangle.
To ensure everyone has enough room to dig and play, you must figure out how much space the sandbox will cover. This special space is called the area.
Area of a Rectangle
First, you need to pick the perfect rectangle shape for your sandbox. You measure and find that your sandbox will be 2 feet long and 6 feet wide. It looks like this.
Now, find the area! The area is the space inside your rectangle, measured in square feet (sq. ft.).
To visualize this, you can create paper squares that are each 1 foot by 1 foot. These squares will help you see how many fit inside your sandbox.
Now, count the squares you placed down.
There are 12 squares. So, the area of your sandbox is 12 sq. ft. Awesome job!
That would be a lot of counting!
Repeated Addition
You can use repeated addition instead of counting each square one by one.
You see that each column has 2 squares, so instead of counting, you can add.
2 ft. + 2 ft. + 2 ft. + 2 ft. + 2 ft. + 2 ft. = 12 sq. ft.
That's much quicker!
Yikes! That's still a lot of work.
Multiplication to the Rescue
Here is a fun fact: Multiplication is like adding the same number over and over again!
To find the area using multiplication, multiply the length (6 ft) by the width (2 ft).
6 ft. x 2 ft = 12 sq. ft.
That's why multiplication is so cool—it helps you find the area so much faster!
Check out this video, which shows the process of finding an area using both repeated addition and multiplication.
Remember, whenever you see a rectangle, you can find the area easily by multiplying the sides. It’s like having a superpower for measuring space!
Keep going to the Got It? section to order a giant rectangular pizza!