This week for STEM Wednesdays, Mission's Senior Director of Education and Program Development, Lauren Fraulo, has put together a fun geometry exercise that's easy to do at home. Kindergarten - 8th grade students are required to learn geometry, making Shape Monsters a great activity for all age groups. Take a look below to learn how you and your kids can test your geometry knowledge!
Materials:
Scissors
Construction paper
Tape or glue
Markers or crayons
Instructions:
1. Explain that students will be designing their own monsters using different shapes.
2. Start by creating a list of shapes.
Students in Kindergarten - 5th grade are required to learn about 2 dimensional shapes and describe the attributes of these shapes.
Depending on their age, students can use more complex shapes.
Some shapes include: circle, square, rectangle, triangle, diamond, oval, hexagon, pentagon, rhombus, octagon, trapezoid, heptagon, quadrilaterals, and parallelograms.
3. Have students pick one shape for the body of their monster. Cut out this shape from paper.
4. Ask students to pick a shape for the monster’s arms, legs, feet, hands, eyes, nose, mouth and more!
5. Cut out the rest of these shapes and start gluing together your monsters!
For an extra challenge, older students could build 3-D shapes using paper and tape (cube, rectangular prism, triangular prism, cone, etc.).
6. As students create each component of their monster, ask them questions about specific characteristics like:
How many sides does this shape have?
How many corners does this shape have?
What do these shapes have in common?
What is different about these shapes?
Younger students should talk about where the shapes are placed on the monster. For example, you might want to say “Oh, you’re putting the nose in the middle of the face”. Students in Kindergarten-2nd grade should be able to use position words like in, on, beside, above, and below to describe where things are placed.
Older students should be able to answer if the shape has any sides that are equal, parallel, or perpendicular. You can also ask older students to identify angles.
This exercise was adapted from an amazing Silly Shape Monster craft!
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