From the apple on your desk and the coffee cup in your hand, to the cabinets along the classroom wall, basic three-dimensional shapes are found everywhere in the world around us. Introduce young mathematicians to the these common figures and the attributes that define them with this fun shape-sorting activity. Working as a whole class, children look at everyday items and decide which three-dimensional category they fit into, identifying specific physical characteristics that support their decisions. After students are familiar with the different shapes, they then work in pairs sorting sets of picture cards showing various three-dimensional objects. This fun activity would make a great addition to math rotations during a geometry unit in the primary grades.

Concepts

3-d figures, 3-d

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Additional Tags

solid shape, solid figure, 3-d figure, properties of 3-d shapes, three-dimensional shape, three-dimensional figure, classifying 3-d shapes, categorizing 3-d shapes, math

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Pros

• A series of sentence frames are provided to support children with identifying attributes of geometric figures
• Lesson includes an additional activity for extending learning about 3-D shapes

Cons

• Activity requires a set of 3-D objects and decks of cards with pictures of 3-D objects
• Sentence frames must be prepared by the teacher prior to the lesson

Common Core

1.G.A.1 MP6 MP7