Area of a Shape

What is Area?

• The size of a surface.

• The amount of space inside the boundary of a flat (2-dimensional) object such as a square, rectangle, triangle or circle. 

Area by Counting Squares

• To find the area of a shape you can count the units/squares it takes to create the shape.

The rectangle has an area of 16

If each square was 1 cm on a side, then the area would be 16 cm2 (16 square cm).


Approximate Area by Counting Squares

• Sometimes the squares don't match the shape exactly, but we can get an "approximate" answer.

One way is:

more than half a square counts as 1
less than half a square counts as 0
if exactly half a square count as 1/2

The Area of a square/rectangle can also be found by
using a formula:

Base x Height = Area