Anneke and Hans are 9 year old Dutch twins living in a small village crisscrossed with canals and parks, nestled against dunes holding back the North Sea in Holland.

In today's adventure we see the twins getting ready to play hopscotch on the 6 foot wide sidewalk of concrete paving blocks, in front of their tall and narrow red brick house.

Each of the sidewalk pavers measures 12 inches along each of its 4 sides in a square shape.

With large pieces of sidewalk chalk the twins get busy marking out a new hopscotch game of their own creation.

Hans says, "I'd like to try hopping between sets of 2 square pavers on the right, and 2 square pavers on the left. I'll draw a line around the outside edge - the circumference of the set of 2 square pavers joined together."

"Well," says Anneke, "The sets now look like rectangles, because they are 2 squares wide and 1 square high!"

"You're right, Anneke - instead of having 4 separate squares, I've made 2 sets, with 2 squares each, to make these rectangle shapes," Hans comments.

Then, Anneke decides to select a set of pavers to hop to next. She thinks a moment and decides to draw on 3 square foot pavers as one wide set.

She draws her outline around 3 pavers laid horizontally - situated at the top edge of Han's 2 rectangles.

Standing back, Anneke admires her very wide rectangle shape which is 1 paver high and 3 pavers wide.

Then, Hans adds another of his 2 sets of rectangles beyond his sister's.

The twins begin their hopping game like this:

Facing the 2 sets of rectangles Hans jumps into the right set with his right foot at the same time as his left foot lands in the left set. Then he hops forward to the one wide set of 3 pavers making the rectangle, and hops forward to the 2 sets of rectangles - then with a good strong jump turns around to go back in the opposite direction.

Anneke and Hans continue playing on the rectangle sets until hearing Ma's call for lunch.

As they head back inside, their thoughts are on how the combination of squares put together into sets made rectangle shapes for their game!

Advanced Kinesthetic Lessons - Introduction
Advanced Kinesthetic Lessons - Geometric Shapes
Advanced Kinesthetic Lessons - Multiplication

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Story by Susan Kramer
The characters in this story are fictional.