Geometry, Shapes and Nets, Oh My!

We’ve been studying the basics of geometry over the past week and doing some fun activities with 3D shapes and nets. Unlike other areas of math, working with shapes and nets are generally seen as more fun by most younger students, especially when you get to draw and build things during math time… and that’s exactly what we’ve been up to. If you’re looking for a creative way to jazz up geometry in the classroom, here are a few ideas.

Activity 1- Building prisms and pyramids

I got this idea while I was looking through our Hong Kong math book a few weeks back preparing for the first unit of geometry. I was looking for something that was hands-on and that allowed my students to practice and create the 3D shapes we’d just learned. This one’s great for the kinesthetic learners in the classroom, but fun enough to engage all the students.

Divide your students into small groups or let them work independently if you have enough supplies for each student. Give them a small ball of clay (about the size of a bouncy ball) and a handful of toothpicks and tell them to build basic 3D shapes. What I did was have them build the shapes then draw and label them in their math journals so they could refer back to them in the future. Another extension could be to list the number of edges, vertices and faces of the shapes. I would be willing to bet that this little activity has helped my students remember the vocabulary more than any other that we’ve done in this unit and it was fun. What a bonus!

 

Activity 2- Isometric Sketching

This year I’ve been trying to do as much journaling as possible with my kids because it’s such a great tool for enhancing learning. I just love the outside-the-box thinking that happens when you do a journal activity for math. This week, one of our journal activities was to use isometric dot paper to create something in 3D. I let them draw whatever they wanted on the dot paper and then asked them to write a short description explaining what they made and what shapes they used to create it. I was pretty impressed with the results. Just google “Isometric Dot Paper”, copy & paste it into a Word document, resize it and you’re good to go. Here’s a couple of pics of what ours look like.

 

 

Activity 3- 3D Shape Mobile

  Ok, so I totally used this as our art project for last week, but it could easily fit into a math lesson. I printed out a bunch of nets of 3D shapes here then we colored them, cut them out and made a pretty hanging mobile for our classroom. What I loved most about this activity is that it took little to no preparation on my part and the kids enjoyed it. I’d say it was a win-win. I’ll be sure to snap a picture of our finished product tomorrow. Until then, I hope you’re having a great week!