I've taught my students the formulas for the surface areas and volumes of prisms, cylinders, and cones for a long time, and yet when they are asked to apply these formulas to everyday objects (cereal boxes, soup cans, printer cartridge packages, etc.), they seem to see the formulas as alien pieces of information.
I created this hands-on lab to help them with these concepts in a physical, hands-on way. This is a challenging activity for my students, sometimes because I find a few students who d