3D Geometry

When I came across these 3D shape books at our local library, of course I grabbed every last one of them! I left not a single one for anyone else to enjoy for the nexts 2 weeks (our standard loan time) plus the 5 renewals I will likely hoard them for. LOL.

I am notorious for keeping books for the maximum allotted time and lucky for me, our library doesn't charge late fees or fines! Anyways, I lugged them all home eager to plan some companion activities!

You guys, this stuff excites me. I’m a complete geek. I nerd out over math, over books, over learning stuff and usually (most often) HOW to teach my always curious, insanely intellectual 4 year old who is desperate to know everything, and I mean EVERYTHING! This tiny tot not only wants to know everything, she wants to know it all, “RIGHT NOW!” and she usually has her hands on her hips and is simultaneously stomping a foot on our hardwood floor as she requests we have “school time” in the living room.

Thankfully, I had acquired this lovely set of 3D shapes from a seller on Marketplace (here’s the link to them on Amazon) and had been saving them to bring out at just the right time for the right set of lessons… well, of course the right time was when I found the plethora of shape books!

We started with a simple sorting activity of all the shapes to learn about their attributes and names.

Afterwards, I had her choose the shape she was most interested in. I would have chosen cylinders personally, but she was evidently drawn to the spheres! So it was spheres we investigated first! Starting off right away with reading a few pages of the book together! What’s really cool is that these books are AV2 media books! I had no idea what they were but inside and on the back they come with these instructions to access an online digital companion book (and it’s even free!)

When you access the online content, there is a digital copy of the book and you can choose to have the device read the book (like an audiobook with a visual to follow along) or you can flip through the book online and read it yourself! It’s neat!

The only downside is that… (how I wish it was all good news) select titles are basically “too old” to be accessed online… so some of them aren’t available that way! My daughter was quite dismayed when we found this out but lots of titles still are online to read!

Anyways, after we read a few pages, she went off on a sphere scavenger hunt! As you can see, she came back with quite a haul!

I plan to do a little scavenger hunt for all the shapes as we go through them! Now that it’s finally warming up here and we can brave the elements without freezing, we may hunt for the shapes out in nature, too! Now, that said… differentiating between 2D (plane or flat) shapes and 3D shapes, especially when working abstractly (in nature) and finding real life items, can be a tricky challenge!

We will likely fold nets of the 3D shapes as well, and attempt drawing them and/or colouring them — all kinds of things to help solidify these new concepts plus working with shapes visually and with the hands can really help build that spatial awareness that we all know is extra important. Speaking of spatial awareness - if you haven’t read my article on the importance of developing spatial awareness, you can find it here.

And with that, I hope you feel a little more inspired to add some geometry into your lessons this week! Happy learning!

-Ashley

If you enjoyed this article, consider sharing it with someone who may also enjoy reading it! You can also leave a tip to support this writing venture of mine (much like a book purchase but by donation). I appreciate all of my lovely readers! Thank you for taking time to read and grow with me.