Chapter 11 · NCERT Class 5 Maths Mela

Grandmother's Quilt

A patchwork quilt is made of little squares sewn together. Count the squares inside and you know its area. Walk all the way around its edge and you know its perimeter. Tap each idea to see how a cosy quilt teaches big maths.

🧵 3 topics⏱ ~20 min📝 10-question quiz

Play with it

Six ideas from the quilt

Area and perimeter are easy once you count squares. Tap each word to see what it means, with a patchwork-quilt example.

Explore · Quilttap a word

Learn

The three big ideas

Area is the amount of flat space a shape covers. On grid paper, just count the squares inside.
For a rectangle you can multiply: area = rows × columns.
Area is measured in square units (like square centimetres) because we are counting squares.

Worked example. A quilt is 5 squares long and 3 squares wide. What is its area, and what is its perimeter?

Area = 5 × 3 = 15 squares. Perimeter = 5 + 3 + 5 + 3 = 16 units.

Perimeter is the distance all the way around the edge of a shape.
To find it, add up the lengths of all the sides. For a 5-by-3 quilt: 5 + 3 + 5 + 3 = 16 units.
Think of it as the amount of lace needed to go around the quilt's border.

Common mix-up: area and perimeter are different! Area is the space inside (count the squares); perimeter is the distance around (add the sides). Two quilts can have the same area but need different lace.

Tiling means covering a surface with a shape that repeats, leaving no gaps and no overlaps.
A patchwork quilt is tiling with cloth squares; a tiled floor is tiling with stone or ceramic tiles.
Squares, rectangles and triangles tile easily; some shapes leave gaps and cannot tile on their own.

Where you'll meet it

Area & perimeter at home

Tiling a floor

Before buying floor tiles, a family counts how many squares cover the room — that is the area. Counting squares stops them from buying too few or too many tiles.

A lace border or a fence

To stitch lace around a quilt or put a fence around a garden, you need the perimeter — the total distance around the edge — so you know how much lace or fencing to get.

Sharing land in fields

Farmers describe plots in square units. Comparing areas tells them which field is bigger, even when the fields are different shapes.

Check yourself

Practice quiz

A friendly set of questions about area, perimeter and tiling — to check that you can work out the space inside and the distance around, not just name them.

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