How Far Around The Baseball Diamond

First we talked about the shape of the baseball field. It is called a diamond. It is really a square tilted to one side. A square has 4 sides that are equal in length. I gave the students the measurement of the side of third to home base. They had to determine the length by looking on the ground and adding up the segments of ten feet that are spray painted on the ground. Once they determined the length of that side they can easily multiply by 4 rather than adding 40+40+40+40. That was their ticket to play. For the lower grades, 1 and 2, we just talked about how far the distance was from 3rd to home. We showed them the 10 foot segments that were painted on the ground. We talked about how to add the 10 foot segments together to get the answer. We talked about how to figure out the problem of solving for how far around all the bases but did not work out the problem.