The area is the size! The size of a surface, to be exact.

While kids know the sizes, the area may be tricky initially as it is not as simple as length, highest, weight. The area is a 2D term that may raise some questions.

Prior knowledge: Square and rectangles. How can students describe them? Let's find them around?

2D or 3D shapes. Square vs. Cube. Let's tell them apart.

Now let's find any square, rectangle-shaped surfaces around us—chalkboard, flat-screen TV, windows, top of the book or table, etc.

Now, let's compare them; yep, a window larger in size than a tablet, and a phone screen is smaller than a door - easy, but how about these two large envelopes?

Which one is larger?

Whether the students voted right or wrong, the teacher's question is, "Why do you think so?" Without measuring both envelopes, it's impossible to tell for sure.

Common sense doesn't help now. When shapes have the same length or same high, we could put one on top of the other, and whichever is stick out is the winner. But in our case, it doesn't work.
 

Let's find it out.

First, let's select a measurement unit? Miles, feet, or inches?

So inches it is.

But as we mentioned before, we measure the area in the square units or, as we decide, inches.
A square, where every side measures 1 inch, is called 'a square inch'. 

We can use cardboard, colored paper, old folders to cut out square units; they will be handy.

Instructions:

· Have a set of colored square units or square tiles.  

· Now cover the space of each envelope with square unit cutouts. Make sure the unit square or square tiles do not overlap each other.

· Count the squares that cover each envelope's surface.

Our answer is:

Twenty-five squares for the yellow envelope and 24 for First Class Mail or getting back to our topic; the area of the yellow envelope is 25 square inches, and the white one is 24 square inches.

You can use smaller envelopes or cardboard cutouts for younger kids.

Another funny activity to compare Areas:

Prepare rectangles and squares out of used boxes and ask students to guess which one of two has a greater area without measuring. Then calculate it by covering them up with prepared unit squares (1 inch)

These pairs have the same area while looking different:

3 x 6 and 2 x 9; 8 x 3 and 4 x 6; 3 x 12 and 6 x 6.

These pairs have slightly different areas, which is impossible to guess without measuring: 3 x 9 and 4 x 7; 7 x 8 and 6 x 9; 4 x 9 and 5 x 7.

By the way, our unit square of 1 inch has its area too! Yep, it covers precisely one squared inch of any surface, so its area is 1 square inch.

For students who already know the timetable or still learning it, we can show good use for multiplication when finding an area.

Now we are clear about how to calculate the area of different shapes using standard units of measurement.

Let's be practical: When we need to calculate the area of a large surface, hallway, for instance, it's going to take ages to have enough colored paper square units, neatly put them on the floor and then someone opens the door and our "square inches" start to fly around, forcing us to lock the door and start again... until one of us sneeze.

But there is a simple solution; we can find a square or rectangle area by multiplying one side by another side.

For calculating areas with the help of multiplication facts, we need to recall multiplication tables. We can even use an image of a times table to introduce how we calculate area. So here we have 144 square units, it's going to take a while to count them one by 1, and you can quickly lose a count and either start to count over or get the wrong answer. That's when the timetable gets handy, but you need to learn it by heart.

Help farmer find the area of his farm;

Plenary:

Ask students to draw three different shapes with the same area in their books. You can also ask them to construct a rectangle whose area is 16 square inches.

Keywords: Area, surface, square, rectangle, units, inches, centimeters, meters, yards, length, width