We play - shapes

Inspired by some ideas from E's classmates who were studying 3 dimensional forms as part of their maths curriculum I decided to introduce this idea to the girls. To start we made playdough. Reviewing the photos, I see that rainbow or bright colours would have looked far more appealing, but this playdough was made with cocoa and designed to appeal to the senses. It smelled divine. Anyway, we rolled the playdough in tiny balls and used toothpicks as the lines to make our geometric shapes. We made cubes, pyramids and rectangular and triangular prisms and explored how geometric forms as opposed to organic forms follow specific rules. (That's the great thing about learning at home - I'm learning all the time too). E conveyed her enthusiasm for the task when she suggested that I tell the other homeschooling mums we know about this activity. To complement our study of 2 D shapes for our kinder and grade one girls - we played with A's childhood tangrams (kindly sent in one of the many parcels from my mum) we made shape pictures with coloured paper shape cut outs, made a powerpoint about shapes in the everyday world and played a shapes' computer game on cbeebies. They are still playing it. Your little ones can find it at - http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/#/lb/misc/shapestore