Area Artist

Teaching Notes for Educators

Students multiply to reveal a hidden pixel-art picture. The picture is cut into rectangles, and each one fills in with its part of the artwork once its multiplication is solved. The game zooms in on a random piece, so the picture stays a mystery until near the end, and zooms back out after each piece to show how it's growing.

• Two kinds of pieces: find the number of squares (3 × 4 = ?), or find a missing side (3 × ? = 12).
• Product Picasso (easy): rectangles from 1 × 1 to 5 × 5, with every unit square drawn so students can always count to check.
• Multiplication Monet (hard): rectangles from 5 × 5 to 12 × 12. The squares are hidden until a wrong answer, when they appear so the student can count or skip-count.
• Wrong answers: the student is reminded that they can count each individual square, the squares are drawn on the rectangle, and they try again. The fill animation counts every square as it paints.
• Picture size: every square of the picture is one solid color, so the picture is built from the squares students count. Short, medium and long pictures take roughly 35, 55 and 80 pieces in Product Picasso, and 10, 20 and 40 bigger pieces in Multiplication Monet.
• Art studio: students pick rows and columns, solve the multiplication, and place the rectangle anywhere on the canvas. Rotating a rectangle (3 × 4 into 4 × 3) shows the commutative property. Creations are saved in the gallery on the device and can be downloaded.
• Discussion: ask students to find two different rectangles with the same number of squares, or to explain how a 6 × 7 rectangle can be split into a 5 × 7 and a 1 × 7 (the distributive property).