Designing The Ideal Bedroom.

In geometry, I love having students create their idea bedroom before calculating the cost of buying paint, carpeting, tile, ceiling tiles, wood flooring to finish the room.

They design the room, figure out where windows, doors, fans, furniture, closets, bathroom, etc go.  Then they must calculate surface area of each wall, floor and ceiling so they know how much of each product they want to buy.

If they want to put in a fan, hanging mirror, painting, set in bookcases, window seats, or anything like that, they are required to research the cost for each item so after they've designed it all, they are required to write out a proper estimate for the cost of finishing the room.

Although I have often had them do this on graph paper, I've since discovered there are apps that allow people to create three dimensional representations of their rooms.  Some of the possible apps for iPad include Home Design 3D or  Live Home 3D or even Keyplan 3D Lite which allow people to design and create 3 D renditions of the plans.

For students who have difficulty visualizing their ideas, these are great because they are set up to help the student draw the scale drawing, furnish it with lights, furniture, everything you need and then the apps turn the 2 dimensional into a 3 dimensional representation so a student can get a better idea of size.  In the past I've had students put small basket ball courts or movie theaters into their bedrooms and often time their furniture was out of proportion with the rest of things.  For instance, the bed might be done so it was 3 times larger than the actual space but they couldn't see it.

I chose this project to end my unit on surface area and area because it gives students the opportunity to apply rounding, surface area, visualization to a real life situation.  They also get a taste of what the interior decorator, architect, and contractor jobs require as they design and create a bill for the cost of their rooms.

There are so many places online they can go to get costs for every piece of furniture, bedding, bookcases they want so they get a realistic idea of the actual cost.  They will discover if the items they want will even ship to their bush addresses. Some are too large or have too much of a shipping cost.  Sometimes, I'll have students add a 25% shipping cost to large items and I'll do some research to get basic costs for paint, carpet, tile, and a variety of flooring.

At the end, they turn in pictures of their room with a itemized bill listing everything and associated cost.  They can provide pictures of the plan and the three dimensional representations so I know what they see.  They enjoy it and I give the whole period for a solid week to this project.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.