Hi teachers friends!
Are you sick of your hearing your students repeatedly say, “I’m just not a math person!”? Math can be a struggle for many. Changing the way you approach new concepts with your students may leave an impact on your math strugglers. Here are fun and creative activities that you can easily modify to fit the needs of your classroom. For more advanced students, I’ll give you ideas to enrich the activity!
1. Geometric Art
Take geometry to an artistic level! Give students specific directions of sizes, colors, and shapes. As an extension, students can classify types (if using triangles, they can label obtuse, right, or acute). They could also measure their angles and find patterns in their artwork.
2. Physical activity games! -Yarn, using your body
This is a unique movement activity and students also get the opportunity to stand up and stretch! Have students tie a large strand of yarn together so when stretched it makes a circle about their height. They can stand on one end of the yarn and contort their body in order to make a rectangle, triangle, etc. It’s a blast (and pretty entertaining for the teacher.. 🙂 )
3. Experimenting with Shapes
Whether your students are learning 2-D or 3-D shapes, let them explore how to use them to design different animals, objects, and creations! You can do this with paper scraps, building blocks, or pattern blocks. This helps with spatial reasoning as well as creative problem solving.
4. Design a Geometric Dream House!
5. Incorporate an interactive math journal!
This is a great way to see student feedback about how they are doing with basic concepts of geometry. Allow them a few minutes to journal and reflect on how they feel about each lesson. Interactive journals are also great for keeping lessons organized and cohesive. Students can also color code and label.. Interactive journals are just plain fun!
6. Birdhouses & Shapes!
This is a cute spring activity for students who are just getting started with basic geometry (Pre-K-1st) In this resource, students color, write, count, and rearrange shapes using birdhouses! It is also common core aligned, with learning how to visualize objects in their environment, correctly name shapes, as well as building and drawing shapes. (K.G.A1, K.G.A.2, and 1.G.A.1)
Find this spring teaching resource here
7. Geo-boards!
Geo-boards are great for exploring and experimenting with shapes. However, students can get really off task with geo-boards and just end up mindlessly making crazy polygons. Make sure you give them set rules such as make a shape with 6 sides… “oh yeah a hexagon!” And then you can explore the differences between regular (all equal sides) and irregular shapes.
8. Shape hunt!
Have a printout of the different shapes your studying, whether they are 2-D or 3-D. Have students grab a clipboard and search around the classroom for objects that match the shape. Then as a class, go over what the found.
9. Marshmallow and toothpick shapes!
Students can build either 2-D or 3-D shapes by sticking marshmallows on each end of a toothpick! These make for some really neat projects!
10. Build a three dimensional city, exploring height, length, width, and volume!
LOVE this project! Question though, does your finished piece have any pencil lines? Did you go over it with an eraser (or something) after you were done painting?