Geometric Sense Activities for Grades 3 - 6
These activities will help your child develop geometric sense, an important "strand" or math theme tested in the WASL math activities.
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Geometric Sense Activities - Use the following links to see the activity. |
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| Solid Shape Search | Flat and Solid Shapes | Lines |
| Angles | Geometric Patterns | Tangrams |
| Pentominoes | Geometry Games | Symmetry |
(Activities taken from Mathematics a Guide for Parents to Everyday Mathematics and Helping Your Child at Home Grades K-6, published by Central Kitsap School District Department of Curriculum and Instruction, 2000.)
Solid Shape Search
- Encourage your child to identify solid shapes by name (e.g., rectangular prisms for cereal or shoe boxes, cylinders for cans, spheres for oranges, cubes for dice in box games.
Flat and Solid Shapes
- Be on the look out for objects or parts of objects that have unusual flat shapes or are solid shapes. Your child may know parallelogram, trapezoid, rhombus, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, rectangular prisms, triangular prisms, pyramid, cone and sphere.
Lines
- Look for examples of different kinds of lines. Ask your child to observe parallel lines (lines that never meet), perpendicular lines (lines that meet at a right angle), and other intersecting lines.
Angles
- Your child can look around the house for angles. Right angles (have one square corner that is 90 degrees), acute angles (smaller than right angles), and obtuse angles (larger than right angles).
Geometric Patterns
- Notice geometric patterns in wallpaper, quilts, curtain material, and floor tiles.
Tangrams
- A tangram is a square cut into seven pieces. There are five triangles of different sizes, one square, and one parallelogram. Choose a tangram puzzle shape. Each player arranges his/her tans to copy the selected shape. All seven tans must be used, and they must all touch without overlapping. the winner is the player who finishes the puzzle first. You can have your child create tangram puzzles for you to solve. Challenges include exploring how many geometric shapes can be made using all seven tans and determining how many letters of the alphabet can be made using all seven tans.
Pentominoes
- Have your child use graph paper or square tiles to make as many different shapes as possible by connecting five squares so that connected squares share a common edge. (There are 12 different pentominoes.) Rotations and reflections are considered the same. You can have your child figure the perimeter and area of each pentomino. Your child can also determine which pentominoes can be folded into open cubes. For a challenge try making hexominoes (six squares).
Geometry Games
- Hopscotch and four-square use shapes and combinations of numbers. Use sidewalk chalk and create your own game to play. Try using different shapes and combinations of numbers.
Symmetry
- By using a small mirror, your child can look for lines of symmetry in letters of the alphabet and in pictures collected from magazines. Have your child experiment to see how many letters have a vertical line of symmetry. How many letters have a horizontal line of symmetry? Which letters have more than one line of symmetry?