Geometry can be a lot of fun OR it can be really confusing. This post shares 10 ways to review attributes of geometric shapes to make it fun!

So, yesterday I showed you how I got my angle studies kicked off with my students–how I solidified understanding of “right angle”. We had lots left to accomplish–so I’ll try to share some of the different lessons and activities we did over the next days! Tip 1: If you can get your hands on thin […]

This year I wanted my geometry unit to be FUN so I packed it with hands-on exploration.

Want a fun way to teach measurement that can be adapted for all students? Let me introduce MEASUREMENT TAG!

Measurement concepts benefit from hands-on learning! Help your K-3 learn non-standard units of measure & how to use a ruler. Get 20 ideas for measurement today!

Bridges are amazing feats of engineering and a great logic challenge for your children designers. Here are some resources to help teach them more about bridges and how they work. Lesson Plans Bridge Lesson on Forces, Arch Bridges, & Truss Bridges – a detailed hands-on unit study designed for a homeschool co-op. Bridge Lesson on […]

A fun and engaging Geometry Project on Measuring Angles where students design a Putt-Putt Course. Examples, rubrics, worksheets, and more included!

I've heard it from teacher after teacher: " I dread teaching measurement every year. " It's hard to blame them. There's nothing ground-shaking about measurement. There's nothing exciting about metric vs. customary. It's just one of those skills that our stud

Geometric Art

Grab a set of marshmallow and toothpick geometry cards to print and build with your kids. It is such a fun way to learn geometric shapes!

Thank you to CINDY over at love2learn2day for linking me in the teaching blogging community. If you haven't been over to visit her blog, it's an awesome resource and I am posting this post for the "Math Box Monday" :) This is a project I usually do in the winter right after Christmas break to ease us into school again. It's a FUN project that allows students to use their creativity while exploring new/old geometry concepts. Time Allotment: - 1 week (or more) Concepts Covered: - Intersecting, Parallel & Perpendicular Lines - Acute, Right, Obtuse & Straight Angles - Polygons - Polyhedrons Procedure: The first two days are spent working on the Geo-Map and the last two days are spent working on the Geo-Bug. Their only homework during this time is to work on these projects so that they are AWESOME on Friday. Geo-Map: Students will design a city that incorperates many 2-D geometric properties such as lines and polygons. Have students draw their whole city in pencil first and then color it. Geo-Bug: Students will design a 3-D geometry bug based on polyhedra that has been covered. Students will give the bug a name, describe its features and habitat. "Geopillar" circa 2010 Uses spheres, trapezoidal wings, rectangular prisms for legs and triangular prisms for antenna Directions for Geo-Bug and Geo-Map: $4 I hope this is a great project for your classroom! I know my students LOVE this one and it is anticipated every year from the start of school!

This free Geometry Bingo will help your students learn all about lines, rays, line segments, parallel lines, and perpendicular lines.

As I posted before, my kids have been struggling with transformations, specifically rotations. I created this project in the hopes that creating an actual template to move around as they transform…

tw When it comes to math, geometry seems to be in a whole different league. Some kids fall in love with it instantly, while it seems challenging for other kids. One of the great things about geometry is that there are so many hands-on activities we can provide for our students, which makes it lots of fun! Here are some of my favorite geometry activities: 1. Start With Shapes I like to have students start with shapes they've known since they were tiny, like triangles, squares, and circles. We draw these on whiteboards as a whole class. Next we draw the more advanced shapes like pentagons, hexagons, octagons, trapezoids, and even the rhombus! This brings us to a discussion of polygons and we can classify shapes that way. Besides whiteboards, there are lots of ways for kids to work with shapes, like Popsicle sticks (which are also great to use to illustrate lines like parallel, intersecting, and perpendicular), LEGOS, Geoboards, and even clothespins which can be clipped together. 2. Marshmallow Geometry I like this activity because any time you add food, kids are all in! Using marshmallows and toothpicks, kids can make simple 2-D shapes, and also 3-D shapes. Plus, this activity is the perfect place to emphasize vertices since each time you add a marshmallow, you place it at a corner. If you have food allergies or school regulations which prohibit food, you can substitute the marshmallows for Play-Doh. 3. Use an Anchor Chart Once students have had lots of exploration time with shapes, it's time to discuss their attributes. I like to actually make this anchor chart with the kids' help. I explain how it will be organized, from the smallest number of sides to the greatest. We also notice patterns of sides and vertices as we create it. I do ask kids for examples of shapes, and sometimes they get really creative with this! 4. Go on a Shape Scavenger Hunt This is an activity that is great to do with some parent helpers if you have any. I like to send iPad cameras with each group, clipboards and pencils, and a record sheet. Kids record the shape that was found, the type of object it was, and where it was found. It's really fun to see what shapes they're able to find while walking around the school campus! 5. Incorporate Some Art I am a huge art proponent so I add art wherever it fits in. Geometry is a great time to do either geometric animals, robots, or people. I usually choose one of those categories but really you could make it a wide open project too! I shared another fun geometric art activity on a blog post I wrote called Incorporating Art in the Classroom. This one is from Literacy Loves Company. As a follow up to geometric lessons on lines and angles, I cut polygons from white construction paper for each child. I have kids use rulers and sharpies and follow my step by step directions of drawing lines and then finding obtuse angles, right angles, perpendicular lines, and so on. After the lesson is done, kids add color to these, making it a really fun art piece. 6. Add Some Kinesthetic Learning Kids need movement and it's easy to add some movement with this unit. For this activity, students will be on the floor working with a partner to make different kinds of lines (parallel, intersecting, and perpendicular), shapes, and angles (right, acute, and obtuse) using their bodies. An alternative is to have kids stand up and use their arms to illustrate these geometric concepts. Another kinesthetic activity is to gather Chinese jump ropes or packages of sewing elastic. If you use elastic, one package is enough for one small group of 5 - 6 kids. The idea is to have students use the elastic as a group to make the shapes you call out (types of triangles are especially good) or types of angles. Different kinds of lines can also be made if two groups work together. 7. Add Some Task Cards and Games Task cards are one of my go-to tools! Kids love the game-like format and I know that they're getting really focused learning on whatever math concept we're working on. I have used them as centers/stations, for whole class math time, for one on one, and as exit slips. If you'd like some pre-made math task cards specifically for geometry, click here; 3rd Grade Geometry Bundle 4th Grade Geometry Bundle 5th Grade Geometry Bundle 8. Read Mentor Text I love it when I can tie reading into math too! The books above are some of my favorite mentor texts for geometry. I love all of the visual examples included. 9. Use Music I just found these songs by Numberock on YouTube and they are perfect for this unit! Really great pictures and catchy tunes: Parallel, Perpendicular and Intersecting Lines Angles Types of Triangles 10. Practice Angles Seriously, next to long division, measuring angles is probably the most difficult math skill students will face in the elementary years! It doesn't help too that it is introduced in fourth grade in common core and then not even mentioned in 5th grade standards. Oh well! One activity that helps is to have kids use graph paper and write their first name in all capital block letters. Students can measure any angles created by the intersection of the letter's lines. Another favorite activity for practicing angles is to take tape and make different lines, which create angles on a desk, table, or even on sheets of butcher paper. Kids use protractors to measure angles and then write with expos (or markers on the butcher paper) right on the desks/tables! Great way to add some fun to this difficult concept! Hope you've found at least a few ideas you can use for your geometry unit! I did want to let you know that I have Math Task Card Bundles for every grade from 3rd - 5th. Each bundle has 30 sets of 32 task cards that cover ALL STANDARDS (CCSS) for those grades. I love prepping them at the beginning of the year and then grabbing whatever concept we're working on for some added practice. If you'd like to take a look: 3rd Grade Math Task Cards Bundle 4th Grade Math Task Cards Bundle 5th Grade Math Task Cards Bundle Thanks so much for stopping by! If you like this post, I would love it if you would pin it or share it with a teacher friend! For more ideas and strategies focused on Upper elementary, be sure to sign up for The Teacher Next Door's free email newsletter right HERE. I'd love to connect with you! Facebook Pinterest Instagram TpT Store

Physical activities, videos, books, games and art projects for teaching elementary geometry vocabulary of points, lines, and angles

I like to break my lessons into chunks. I think this chunking method helps students attend to the lesson better and is brain friendly. A typical lesson for me usually has three to four parts. I have an essential question, such as, what is a transformation? After that, I would engage with the Transformation Hustle. (See the video for the instructions.) I would further explain with the Transformation video. (Let me know if you need instructions on how to save YouTube videos to a flash drive.) Then the students would explore with the transformation craftivity. Click HERE or on the picture for a free copy. I apologize for having a zillion versions, but I was trying to cover a wide grade range. I teach my students the SLide and FLip trick for remembering what a reflection and translation are, so I made some with SL and FL capitalized in the middle. Finally, I would give my students examples of transformations and let them answer on their whiteboards. I jot down the names of students that are still struggling. Sometimes I have them answer the EQ in their math journals. I would love to have you as a follower. Either way I wish you luck as you continue to create magic in your classroom.

Rotation, reflection, and translation made easy.

Add these 6 angle activities to teach acute, right, straight, and obtuse angles to prepare your students to identify different types of angles.

With the beginning of our geometry units in 6th grade math, it has been all about angles and triangles this past week! Thanks to some creative (and cheap!) angle ideas I found on social media, I was able to incorporate some new things in my classroom this year as we start geometry! First off, this fun idea to reinforce a basic understanding of angles! With some leftover fun tape from Office Depot, a little card stock to write the angles, and about ten minutes, I made this fun entryway into the classroom. I can't take credit for the idea, but am happy to share it! It definitely caught the students attention and had them thinking about different angles! The second fun idea I found (again... can't take credit for this one) I was able to use with my math intervention groups this week. After we had learned about different angle relationships (vertical angles, supplementary angles, and complementary angles), I covered our front dry-erase table with table at various angles. I then went through and measure the minimum number of angles they would need to be able to find all of the missing angles without a protractor. This turned out to be a great problem solving challenge and really promoted teamwork and working together. I could also see this working out great as a math center during math workshop. UPDATE: I recently added a full set of Angle Relationships Task Cards to my TpT store! It currently includes over 70 challenging angle problems and 4 different levels of difficulty! With the start of geometry, I was also able to try out one of my newest units of Math Task Cards: Triangles, Quadrilaterals, and Transformations. I now have two sets of task cards up in my store. A set of Math Task Cards, which are a little more basic problems. Then, for students that finish these quickly, I have them try the Math Enrichment Task Cards. Having these more challenging task cards makes it easy to push my higher students and keep them challenged! Here are a couple shots of the prep and final product of some of these task cards. I always print out six cards for each topic, which is what I need for my math workshop front table group. If I have time I corner round the corners and laminate to help them last! Geometry has also allowed me to finally get to what is probably my favorite Challenge of the Week problem! I recently updated this freebie with five more questions that could be used, so be sure to re-download it if you have already grabbed this one from my store in the past! So that's what we have been up to in 6th grade math recently. I'd love to hear what you have all been working on in your classrooms! And how about some humor to get everyone on their way? Who knew that One Direction is now a swear word?

This is a multiple choice worksheet that students look at a transformation and choose rather it is a translation, reflection, or rotation.

This week we started our geometry unit. I like to save geometry for second semester. It is a great reprieve from all of the multiplication and division practice! We started by learning about a point, line, ray, and line segment. I introduced each item with a movement, and then we practiced, and practiced, AND PRACTICED. My kiddos love taking turns being the “leader”. Angles Angles were next on the agenda. I introduced angles in a similar way. First, we used our arms to create the angles and to get out of our seats. Then we moved to our interactive notebook. After developing a definition for each angle as a class, the students wrote the definition and drew an example in their notebook. You can find the angles flip book HERE. We also did a fun name activity with angles. It was really nice outside that day. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to pull out the glitter...I was wrong. This glitter gives me anxiety! #alltheglitter I used the angles sort as a quick, informal assessment to see where my kiddos were before moving on to the next skill. Click HERE to grab the angle sort and 5 in a row game as a freebie from my tpt store.

Try these fun angles activities in your maths classes to make geometry lessons more engaging!

Teaching area and perimeter can be challenging, but these fun and meaningful lessons ideas can help you teach area and perimeter in a fun, engaging way!

We are on our 4th week of measurement in my class! PTL the rulers are put away this week because we've moved onto learning about area! After 3

This geometry activity for the first day of school is a great way to assess students' prior knowledge. It is a fun and free way to pre-test them! Click to..

Thanks for all of your sweet comments about my last post! I made most of my geometry unit on my own. I will definitely be sharing some of the things, but I am thinking of finally taking the plunge …

Measurement is one of my most favorite math concepts to teach. Put a ruler in the hands of a student and they are as happy as a peach! When Hope

Geometry can be a lot of fun OR it can be really confusing. This post shares 10 ways to review attributes of geometric shapes to make it fun!

Looking for a fun and enagaging way to teach linear measurement? Check out these monster themed measurement activities that make learning fun

Explore learning the important geometry terms while working on this geometry map project that's hands-on, engaging, and integrates social studies!