Geometry Art Activity

Our Title I teacher came in to my room Friday and did an amazing art activity with my students.  Hopefully I can explain it well enough for you to understand.

1. Fold paper into fourths.












2. Add a point anywhere on the middle of the fourth. Draw points along the edges. Make sure the points are right on the edges.






3. Connect the middle point to all of the outer points.

4. Open the page up so you see another fourth totaling half of the page. Continue the process again. Put a point anywhere on the new fourth and connect it to the points on the edge of the prior fourth. Then draw points on the other edges and connect.

5. Open up the page so you only see one new fourth. Again add a point and connect to the points on the edges and then add new points to the existing edges.













6. Finally repeat the process with the last fourth.








When all lines are finished students can color in each of the spaces. We limited our students to only four colors and told them the same color could not touch itself.

Many activities can be gathered from this lesson. Students can highlight angles (obtuse and acute), shapes, lines, rays, etc.

Happy Geometry Fun!

Geometry: Shapes, lines, rays

Recently I posted an activity to help students with the concepts of lines, rays, and angles.  You can visit that post here.  The students and I read together the book The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns shortly after our activity and my students began to wonder about creating a circle.  If you aren't familiar with The Greedy Triangle, this book is about a triangle who decides he doesn't like being a triangle anymore.  He goes to see the shapeshifter who keeps giving him one more side and one more angle until he can barely walk since he is almost round.  He finally decides that being a triangle isn't so bad afterall.  It is a great story that the kids LOVE!   Some of my students began putting their lines they made (see the first post again) together to create different shapes.  I am almost ashamed to admit it but I've never thought to do this before during this activity. I was elated.  Here are the shapes we made:

So much fun!  They learned alot!  Visit my TpT store for some great math, reading, and writing resources!

Classroom Freebies: Geometry Lines, Rays, Angles, and Points

I am in the midst of my geometry unit at school and I've been digging through my resources.  I found this one in a file I had from a conference I went to.  It is a great visual for students to make in order to get a visual on the vocabulary for lines, rays, angles, and points.  You will need five strips of paper about the length of a notecard in different colors if  you desire.  The width is entirely up to you but I'd say about an inch is good and a brad fastener. Here are pictures of the project:

Front of the strips

Back of the strips

Demonstrate a ray

a line

angles

Line segment

 Let me know what if you use this idea.  Leave me some comment love! :)

Area and Perimeter using Pentominoes

I began using math stations today.  One of my kids favorite stations was the area and perimeter station.  I filled a black tub with one inch square tiles and pentominoes.  Pentominoes have five squares hooked together on a flat plane in 12 different variations.  Students can do so many activities with them in relation to shapes, rotations, reflections, translations, area, and perimeter.  I created a set of pentominoes which you can download for free. Click here for your free download. Ideas for using the pentominoes includes:

1. finding the area and perimeter of each pentomino
2. using the pentominoes to cover a given shape (like a puzzle)
3. combine the pentominoes together to create a shape with a given area
4. combine the pentominoes together to create a shape with a given perimeter
5. using the pentominoes to cover a given shape and then find the area and perimeter

Do you use pentominoes in your classroom? If so, do you have an idea you can share? I would love for you to leave a comment and let us know.