Grade 7 Math Activities

Math has exciting applications in everyday life, particularly in such fields as architecture, engineering, and even art. This activity leads your child to explore the role of math in these fields and to gain deeper understandings of geometry, scale, measurement and proportion.

	Ruler or other measuring tool (tape measure, meter stick, ...)

	Calculator

	Paper and pencil

	Scale drawing of the Empire State Building (print this page)

	Other materials for making pictures such as construction paper, scissors, paints, magazine pictures, glue, and so forth (optional)

The picture below shows the Empire State Building drawn to scale. The actual measurements of the building are labeled:

	Height (top of roof): 381 meters or 1,250 feet

	Height at top of tower: 449 meters or 1,472 feet

	Maximum length: 129 meters or 424 feet

Ask your child to use these measurements and the drawing to make her own drawings (or paintings or collages) of the Empire State Building that are of different sizes than this one, but still proportional to the real Empire State Building.

Have your child begin by finding the scale used in this drawing. Ask her to measure the dimensions using a ruler. Since the measurements are given in meters, she should use centimeters or millimeters. If she wants to use inches, she should compare her measurements to the actual dimensions given in feet (see list above), but this can sometimes make calculations more difficult (since fractions of inches will be involved).

After finding one of the distances on the drawing, your child can find the scale of the drawing by dividing the real distance by the distance she found. For example, if she measures the length of the building and gets 3.25 cm, she needs to divide 129 meters (actual length) by 3.25 cm to get the scale of the drawing. She can then check the scale with the other distances as well.

Once your child has found the scale, ask her to double the size to make her own drawing. For example, if the scale of the drawing is 40 meters for each cm (actual sizes will vary), ask your child to use a scale of 40 meters for every 2 cm, which is the same as 20 meters to 1 cm. She can then use the scale to make calculations using the actual dimensions of the building, or simply double the measures she found with her ruler. Then she will be ready to start her own drawing. She may want to use a ruler to carefully measure each part of the building, or make comparisons visually. The important thing is that she shows the proportions accurately.

Encourage your child to be creative with this activity. She can make many different drawings (or collages, paintings, cutouts, and so forth) using different materials and different scales as well. For example, ask her to make a drawing that shows the building three times as large as the picture here.

After making several pictures in two dimensions, your child might be ready to make a three-dimensional model with this additional piece of information about the Empire State Building:

	Maximum width: 57 meters, or 187 feet

In creating scale drawings and models, your child develops practical understandings of measurement and geometry and focuses on the important ideas of scale and proportion.

 Grade 7 Math Activities