Investigating More Shapes

Today we continued working on shapes. First we revised what we had learnt about 2D shapes. Then, as we are also studying architecture, we looked at these books about geometric patterns and tessellations in buildings.We also looked at some tessellations by the artist Escher.

We copied some of the designs and added our own colour scheme.

Next we used our geometric solids from Learning Resources to investigate 3D shapes. First we revised the names of the shapes. Then I explained what faces of shapes are and we discussed how the faces could be flat or curved. We placed the shapes in a feely bag and the children took turns to feel a shape, describe its faces and guess which one it was.

Now I usually use hoops or string loops to make a Venn diagram. However I took one look at my new rug and found it would work perfectly! The children sorted the shapes into those with flat faces, curved faces and those with both.

Our ready made rug Venn diagram

I then explained what vertexes (corners/points) and edges of the shapes are. The children used mini post-it-notes to label each shape.

Next we will look for shapes in buildings around us.