I found this question in Everybody Counts (Mathematical Sciences Education Board, 1989, p. 32) and thought it would be a great one to do if your class is learning about area.
Design a dog house that can be made from a single 4 ft. by 8 ft. sheet of plywood. Make the dog house as large as possible and show how the pieces can be laid out on the plywood before cutting.
This is a great place to say that even though here in Canada we are officially a metric country, we are bombarded in real life with the Imperial system of measurement. I, for one, think students should be “bilingual” in both metric and Imperial! If Imperial measurement are not in your curriculum, it is still fine to work with those units. It just means you don’t assess for a grade regarding Imperial measures.
Mathematically yours,
Carollee
