Tin Man Surface Area

You may remember from a couple of years ago this fun project where students had to find the surface area of 3D shapes to figure out how much tin foil they needed to cover their tin man.

In 6th grade we only do rectangular prisms and triangular prisms. This project actually fit better with 6th grade because in 6th grade they have to know how to find the surface area from the net.

When I gave them their nets, I required them to find their total surface area before I would let them cut out their shapes and glue them together,

To keep things a little more accurate, I hot glued all of the shapes together for them after they cut them out and folded them,

Then, they told me their area and I gave them their tin foil.

I introduced surface area to them before we started the project and that helped things go much smoother!

I was really impressed with how they turned out. I let them choose if they wanted to put the tin foil on before or after I glued the shape together for them. I only had one group put the tin foil on before the shape was glued together. They were super meticulous and their tin man dog (because saying it had to be a man was too confining for their creative minds) turned out the best by far! Look how smooth their tin foil stayed.

This group really got into decorating them and came up with some great creations.

There were some really cute ones...

Some really weird ones...

A bad one or two thrown in...

And, some hilarious ones...

I was impressed with how well they did. There were only a few who didn't have enough tin foil. They really enjoyed it!