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I've Seen That Shape Before

Pre-K-2

Students learn the names of solid geometric shapes and explore their properties. At various centers, they use physical models of simple solid shapes, including cubes, cones, spheres, rectangular prisms, and triangular prisms.

Tangram Puzzles

Pre-K-2

In this activity, students choose a picture and use all seven tangram pieces to fill in the outline. They describe and visualize what figures look like when they are transformed through rotations, reflections, or translations, and are put together or taken apart in different ways. This activity helps students to develop their spatial memory and spatial visualization skills, to recognize and apply transformations, and to become more precise in their use of vocabulary about space. Students use an internet-based tool to explore tangram puzzles.

Shapes and Poetry

Pre-K-2

Students read the poem "Shapes" from A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstein, and create their own illustration of the poem. In this lesson, students explore geometric figures and positional words.

Figuring In Football

Pre-K-2

In this primary grades lesson, students identify figures on a football field. They look for both congruent and similar figures, and they consider figures that are the same but that occur in a different orientation because of translation, rotation, or reflection.

My Pet

Pre-K-2

In this lesson, students develop and use spatial relationships and spatial memory by creating a map of a pet. The students use visual and spatial skills, measure with nonstandard units, and describe "trips" around their pet using directional and positional words.

Puzzling Relationships

Pre-K-2

Puzzles provide excellent opportunities for students to apply spatial relationships in an entertaining and meaningful way. In the first part of this lesson, the students use concrete materials to develop the skills needed to work with interactive tangram puzzles in the second part of the lesson. The students also further develop their understanding of spatial relationships and develop problem-solving skills.

Once students complete puzzles using concrete materials, introducing them to virtual puzzles enables them to experience turns, rotations, slides, and spatial relationships in a powerful way. These transformations are more apparent in a virtual environment than when using concrete tools.

Squares are Special Rectangles

Pre-K-2

Students compare and sort rectangles and special rectangles called squares learning to distinguish between the two using their attributes. They will use manipulatives to form squares and rectangles. They will also identify and take pictures of squares and rectangles around school and make a class book.