Playing with Barbies

I got most of my 20-plus Barbies from eBay and use them well.

I use the Barbies with my 6th graders when we study proportions. I also use them for Barbie Bungee with my algebra students during our unit on linear equations.

The students work in groups of three—one Barbie per group. They take various measurements of Barbie from head to toe; then, they take the exact same measurements of someone in their group.

(I did this activity with math teachers once, and some 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 want to volunteer to have their measurements taken.)

I then assign each group one measured body part—Group 1 has “feet,” Group 2 has “waist-to-ankle length,” Group 3 has “head height,” Group 4 has “legs,” etc. Students then take the ratio of their group's assigned human body part to Barbie's. They multiply all of Barbie's measurements by this ratio and sketch their “humanized” Barbie based on these scaled-up numbers.

Below is one of the ten posters that will go up in our school’s cafeteria.

What my kids 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.

Also, 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 did her legs for our body part, it would be soooo long.

Updated 02/09/12