Reading aloud Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes provided first grade students with the perfect introduction to 3-D shapes.  Students understand that 2-D shapes are flat, where as 3-D shapes are not.  Conducting a 3-D shape hunt, students practiced identifying real world examples in our classroom, in our shared lunchroom area, and on the patio.  Moving forward, students will be building shapes with magnatiles (a favorite first grade math manipulative), working on IXL, and manipulating geometric solids. Students will be asked to identify each of the following: sphere, cone, cylinder, cube, rectangular prism, triangular prism, pyramid.  They will be asked to determine the number of edges, faces, bases, and vertices for a variety of 3-dimensional solids.  Next week, we’ll continue to be hands on as students will use objects representing edges and vertices to construct additional models of 3-D shapes.

Here are just a few examples of the shapes we found:

• sphere – globe, ball
• cone – tip of a pencil,
• rectangular prism – fish tank, microwave, tissue box, hooks
• cube – dice,
• triangular prism – place value chart
• cylinder – paper towels, ceiling pipes, marker container, bleach wipes