Pentagons and hexagons and strawberries...

This week we were going to finish up shapes with the multisided polygons: 

pentagon, hexagon. heptagon, octagon, nonagon and decagon.

We didn't quite make it there.   

On Monday we did learn that a shape with five sides is a pentagon, and it looks like a home base for baseball.

Ari: You mean t-ball Morah Katie.

Morah Katie: Do I?

Ari: I think you do, it looks like the base at T-ball. 

Morah Katie: I can agree with that.

Jade: It looks like a dreidel.

Morah Katie: It does look like a dreidel.

I felt good about pentagons. 

And though I was sad for other shapes I was pleased to witness:

Clara and Nora storytelling with the help of some animals.

Maia and Aura busy developing fine motor skills.

Augie and Abram writing letters to their friends.

Nora and Evelyn creating their own story with the farm animals.

Renita and the children harvesting in the garden.

There was just enough strawberries on monday for everyone to enjoy one.

Some of my friends packed some green to take home, some just ate them on the playground.

The inspired architecture reached new heights this week.  

The self control used to walk around it was as impressive.

Later in the week we did find our way back to shapes.

 

With the help of some play dough and sticks we created shape structures to take home.

Judah: Oh good an experiment!

Morah Katie: It will be. I want to make a pentagon that will stand up, but I'm not sure it will. 
It seems to keep falling over.

Judah: You can put play dough underneath the bottom stick to make it stick to the plate.

We tried Judah's idea, unfortunately, the pentagon did not stand.

Morah Katie: I failed. Should I give up?

Kids: NO!

Morah Katie: I can try a triangle? 

And...my triangle stood up.

Clara: I am making a star. It has a lot of points.

Nora: I am making a triangle too but it is a flat one. 

Olivia: I am making spheres, round likes balls.

Clara: Olivia's spheres look like pile of rocks at the beach I've seen once.

 Evan: I am making a lot of shapes.

Morah Katie: You are. What are you making?

Evan: I made quadri...lateral.  (pause)  It's a parallelogram.

Morah Katie: I agree.  Does it have a name?

Evan: A RECTangle. And I made a triangle when I cut the other one in half.
Ari: Judah We just need to match all the shapes to this paper.

 
Judah: Oh we can do that and then use those blocks to build towers.

Whether it is using stencils to trace them or just going freehanded, 

Augie, Asher and Abram continue to have fun creating shapes.

It has been a great month of discovery. 

Geometry Fun

Geometry Fun

Morah Katie: A quadrilateral is a 4 sided shape with 4 angles.

What do you think quad means?

Augie: 4.

We discovered that the floor on the way to the playground is covered with quadrilaterals and the doors to the social hall are quadrilaterals too!
Judah: The door is 2 rectangles and it makes one big square.
Clara: And the pictures on the wall were all rectangles too.
Judah: Those are all quadrilaterals!

 At lunch we discovered more quadrilaterals. 

 Matan: My napkin has 3 shapes in it. And it is one big shape.

 Nora: Hey! There are shapes in my lunch!

Clara: My whole lunch box is one big quadrilateral.

We are discovering that quadrilaterals can be pretty cool shapes.

Clara: (touching the picture of a rectangle) They all have the same type of angle.
Evan: Not all rectangles are squares.
Augie: If you stretch a square out it can become a rectangle, or if you put 2 squares together it becomes a rectangle.
Judah: Some of our tables are squares. And all of these are parallelograms and quadrilaterals.

Morah Katie: There is something special about the angles of squares and rectangles, who remembers the name of the special angle?
Judah: It's the right angle. 
Ari: Rectangles have the right angles too.   
Clara: A rhombus can't be a square.
Augie: It doesn't have the right angle.
Evan: A rectangle can't be a square.
Matan:Why can't a rectangle be a square?

Judah: A rectangle is a shape with 2 long sides and 2 short sides. 
Ari: A square has all the same size sides.
Evan: And a square has right angles.

Matan/Lochlan: Morah Katie what shape is this?

Morah Katie: How many sides does it have?

Matan: 4.

Matan: So it's a rectangle?

Morah Katie: Let's measure it. 

Morah Jillian brought us a ruler and we discovered that sides were each 6 inches long.

Morah Katie: What do we know about shapes with the same size sides?

Matan: It's a square? It's a square. 

Morah Katie: Yeah, it's a square.

Evan: A rhombus can be a diamond.  

Ari: They have the same size sides like squares but they aren't squares.

Judah: Rhombuses don't have right angles. But rhombuses are still quadrilaterals.

Moving on to Circles

Morah Katie: Please tell me something about circles.
Abram: Well there can be solid circles that roll, and those are called spheres.
Judah: A circle can make a pie if you slice it, or a pizza.
Matan: Half a circle is a semi-circle.
Maya: Ovals are like circles.
Augie: Ovals are just squashed a little up top.
Morah Katie: What is an ellipse then?
Judah: The squished circle.

We know that spheres are a type of geometric solid.
They have surface area (sides that could be painted), and volume (stuff inside).
Ari and Matan brought a honeydew melon for snack.
Its shape was an ellipsoid, a ....
Judah: Squished sphere.
I rolled it back and forth, as well as trying to roll a paper circle. The melon rolled better.
But what would happen if we sliced the melon into circles?
I slowly and carefully began to slice the ends off, and after a few slices we got a few good circular pieces, but they did not roll.

Morah Katie: Why are the circle slices of honeydew not rolling? 
Augie: Because they are just circles, they aren't the whole melon, they aren't the solid.
Judah: It's thin like the paper.
Morah Katie: What type of circles can roll?
Matan: Tires are circles that roll.
Morah Katie: Why?
Abram: Because there is more of them to roll on. They are bigger. Not just paper.

Morah Katie: What about cylinders? 

Augie: They have circles on them. 

Morah Katie: Cylinders are geometric solids that have two flat circles on the ends of a curved middle section. Do we have any in our classroom?

Judah: We have some block cylinders to build with.

Morah Katie: Keep your eye out for other cylinders.

Evelyn: These markers are cylinders, and these paints are cylinders.

Morah Katie: They sure look cylindrical. Can I show you something?

Evelyn: Sure.