How do I find the area of this region? A square with edge length 2 cm has semicircles drawn on each side.
Find the total area of the shaded region. 

Here is an image of the diagram shown :

   

Please show your work in pictures, numbers, words, anything. (Try to keep it to a Grade 8 level too)
The square has area $4$. 

The top and bottom white region together have area $4$ minus $2$ times the area of the semi circle, that is, $4-2\times \pi r^2/2=4-\pi$ (since $r=1$). 



So, dividing by $2$, the top blue region has area $2-\pi/2$. 

If you remove this area from the area of the top semi circle you obtain the area of the two top red parts. 



Double it to obtain the red area.
A layman's (mine) approach to solving it:

There are 4 half-circles contained in the square. The 4 half-circles have the same area as two whole circles with the same radius. The radius (half the length of the diameter, which is the length of a side of the cube) is 1 and the area of a circle is $\pi r^2$, so the area of the four half-circles is $2 ( \pi * (1)^2)$, which is $2\pi$. The square can only hold an area of $4$ and all its space is used, so the excess area of the circles' area must be contained in overlap. The the area not able to be contained be the square without overlap is given by $2\pi - 4$.

This, of course, only works out nicely because ALL the area inside the square is being used. Were part of the square unused, you would have to add the area of the unused portion into the calculation of the overlap.