PRISM: Grand Opening is a 10-session Math Lab — 15–20 hours of instruction where teams of four students design and build departments of a pet supply store. Students tile grid sheets with wood blocks to find area, measure lengths with custom PRISM rulers, lay out parking lots and pet play zones on oversized Petville maps (11×17), construct display tables, and design store signs — all with physical materials they handle, arrange, and measure themselves.

Students start by tiling surfaces and counting unit squares to build a concrete sense of area. They measure side lengths with rulers, connect those measurements to multiplication, and begin computing area and perimeter from dimensions rather than counting. By the later sessions, they're combining area and perimeter reasoning to solve multi-step design problems — choosing materials, checking that departments fit the floor plan, calculating costs.

How the Curriculum Works

The project runs as a single sustained narrative. Students are hired as team members at PRISM Pet Supply, and each team runs a different department of the store. Across 10 sessions, they move from tiling and counting to multi-step area, perimeter, and multiplication problems — all embedded in the work of building out their store.

• Sessions 1–2: Make employee ID cards, draft a floor plan by tiling grid paper with wood blocks, and choose a store location by measuring distances on the Petville map and reading scaled bar graphs.
• Sessions 3–4: Design pet play zones and a parking lot — placing blocks to create rectangular areas, then measuring perimeter by running rulers around the edges.
• Sessions 5–6: Stock shelves by arranging items into arrays on grid sheets and build display tables by combining objects into larger arrays — both structured around multiplication as repeated groups.
• Session 7: Build an aquarium castle, adding, subtracting, and multiplying to calculate material quantities.
• Session 8: Design store signs, applying area and perimeter together.
• Session 9: Write and perform a commercial with embedded computation.
• Session 10: Capstone — find the missing MATHKINS™ dogs using perimeter, area, and multiplication to decode clues.

Who It's For

• 3rd grade teachers looking for supplemental curriculum in measurement and area
• 4th–5th grade teachers who need review and enrichment
• Afterschool and summer program directors who want structured STEM programming
• Curriculum coordinators looking for standards-aligned supplements that work alongside any core curriculum — no adoption process required

What's in the Kit

All materials are physical. Materials are consumable — students keep their work.

• Oversized Petville maps (11×17)
• Wood blocks (½″ and ¾″)
• Custom PRISM rulers
• Department grid sheets
• Blueprint and shelf posters
• Name cards, stickers, construction paper, glue sticks
• Chenille stems, dice, tongue depressors, clear labels
• MATHKINS™ stuffed dogs
• Quick reference booklet

Every session runs through a web-based slide portal at algebrastudio.org. Howie is the on-screen instructor in embedded video mini-lessons — he introduces each task, demonstrates the math, and walks students through the activity. The slides run the session. Open the kit, follow the slides, and go.

Sessions run between 45 and 90 minutes, with some extending longer at your discretion. The curriculum works as a daily block (3–4 weeks), a twice-weekly enrichment (5–10 weeks), or an afterschool/summer program. It supplements any core curriculum — students learn measurement and area concepts through their regular instruction, and PRISM is where they apply those concepts with physical materials and collaborative problem-solving.