SHAPES: Understanding Form

Well, now that I've gotten to know the kids and taught a couple times, it's time to update the blog. The kids have been learning about shapes in Math, so we've taken 2D and 3D shapes and created conglomerate shapes from them.
On 2D day, I had paper cut outs of basic shapes - triangle, circle, square, and had them look at basic shapes in the room and duplicate that with shapes on their paper (i.e. lamp: triangle (for the top) and circle (for the body)). I was very impressed with how creative they were. Some of the things I wish I had done differently was to have more source images for them to look at, we just looked at objects in the room, and some of them had a hard time finding something they were interested in duplicating. I also think that if I had done a demo for them and left it up for them to look at it would have helped them to come up with more ideas. The other thing that might have helped them to really create what they wanted would have been to have more variety of size in the paper shapes. Overall I think they had fun and got really creative. It's a good exercise to help them learn how to see and observe. Perhaps more variety of shapes (oval, rhombus, diamond, thinner triangles and rectangles) would have also allowed them to expand that vision.
For our 3D project, I had construction paper for them to cut and fold to make 3D shapes. Remembering from last time, I decided to do a demo for them, I showed them how to make a cylinder (matching end to end of a rectangular piece of paper), I also showed them how to make a cone and told them they could also just cut and fold to make whatever shape they wanted. I think that I should have just shown them how to make basic shapes in a more simple form. A few were frustrated because they didn't know how to make a cube or cone, etc... After creating their own basic shapes I had them get into groups of 3 or 4 and combine the shapes they made together to elicit interaction and teamwork, as well as to help each other be creative and think of ways to combine shapes to make other forms. They had a lot of fun coming up with ways to do that. At the end I asked them to talk about their shapes and how I created them. I think they really enjoyed that part. I'm very impressed with how well they understand shapes and how creative they are.

Lesson Plan:

Some of the creations:

(photos to come - I forgot my camera at the school - we were just having too much fun!)