Count the Squares, Find the Area!

Imagine you are tiling a bathroom floor with small square tiles. You want to know how many tiles you need to cover the whole floor — not just the edges, but every bit of it. How would you figure that out? Think about it for a moment before we begin.

Area is the amount of flat space inside a shape. We measure area by counting how many equal squares fit inside the shape without any gaps or overlaps. When we count squares on a grid, each small square usually stands for one square centimetre — we write that as cm². The little raised 2 tells us we are measuring in two directions: across and up. Here is the key rule: count every whole square that is completely inside the shape. Do not count squares that are outside the shape or only touched at a corner. Look at the worked example below to see this in action.