I got most of my 20-plus Barbies from eBay—and I use them well.
I bring out the Barbies when my 6th graders are learning about proportions. I also use them for Barbie Bungee with my algebra students during our unit on linear equations.
Students work in groups of three—one Barbie per group. They take various measurements of Barbie from head to toe, then take the same measurements of someone in their group.
(I once did this activity with a group of math teachers, and a few were concerned that students might not want to be measured. I've done this activity for the last seven years, and if anything, the kids are eager to volunteer.)
I assign each group one specific body part to focus on—Group 1 gets "feet," Group 2 gets "waist-to-ankle length," Group 3 gets "head height," Group 4 gets "legs," and so on. Each group takes the ratio of their assigned human body part to Barbie’s. They then multiply all of Barbie’s measurements by this ratio and sketch their “humanized” Barbie using the scaled-up numbers.
Below is one of ten posters that will go up in our school cafeteria.
What students wrote in their reflections on this activity:
The Barbie was weird. Ms. Nguyen was right—Barbie does look like a freak in human form.
We did a life-sized Barbie, and my group got “feet,” so that meant she was super tall.
That Barbie project was very fun but creepy at the same time. Barbie was freakishly disproportionate.
Our Barbie’s feet were REALLY small.
We did a really fun project with Barbie. I learned a lot about proportions because of it.
People were really creative with their Barbie. Our Barbie’s name is LOLA! She is cute.
We worked on Barbie, and it was weird because Barbie is so weird. My group messed up, and now Barbie is messed up—it doesn’t even look like Barbie.
We had an insane task! We had to see what Barbie looked like in human form, and she’s a FREAK! It was pretty fun to do though.
Barbie was a hard, hard, hard challenge. She is so tall. If we had done her legs for our body part, it would’ve been soooo long.
Updated February 9, 2012
