Rainforest Music and Numeracy Investigations!

The Grade 3’s have started a topic on Tropical Rainforests. In music, we composed our own piece of music called ‘Voices of the Rainforest’. We thought of the different animals that we might hear and used percussion instruments for their voices.

Click here if you would like to hear us performing our voices-of-the-rainforest.mp3

Look at the photo above and see if you can hear the different instruments we are playing.

We have also been exploring area and perimeter in Numeracy and would like to share some of our investigations with you and link you to a few great websites that we have enjoyed.

Rainforest Math is superb site for Kindergarten up to Grade 6. Lots of interaction as you practise your skills in areas of Numeracy.

Area and Perimeter

Learn everythng you ever wanted to know about area and perimeter (suitable for Grades 3-6).

Geoboard Investigation

We made shapes on a geoboard with rubber bands.

We counted the squares inside to find the area. Sometimes there were half squares. Two half squares make a whole square. We recorded the shapes we made on dotted paper. We also made shapes with multilink and recorded the area on squared paper.

Multilink Dog Investigation

We made dogs with Multilink cubes.

Each new dog was made bigger with one more cube, so the area increased by one cube. We found the perimeter of each dog. We noticed a pattern. Can you see the pattern?

Pink dog
Area = 8 cubes squared Perimeter = 18 cubes

Orange dog
Area = 9 cubes squared Perimeter = 20 cubes

Red dog
Area = 10 cubes squared Perimeter = 22 cubes

What do you think the perimeter of the next dog will be?

What do you think the perimeter of a dog with an area of of 20 cubes will be?

Hint: Perimeter = (Area x 2) + 2

Swimming Pool Investigation

We investigated making different shaped designs for swimming pools. Each pool had an area of 10 cubes squared. We explored the different total costs for making each pool, if the cost of the concrete perimeter was $100 for each cube. Look at the photo below. How much would each swimming pool cost to build? Which is the cheapest pool design?

Finally, review your skills here at the BBC Skillswise website.

We hope you had fun listening to our rainforest music, enjoyed our area and perimeter investigations and took the time to visit our links.