I recently pulled out a geoboard for my kids to play with, and was pleasantly surprised with the depth of content we covered through (lightly-directed) playful discovery. As a former high-school Geometry teacher, I was happy to see my own kids interact so enthusiastically with hands-on math concepts. I’ve created a free set of Geometry vocab flashcards (see link further down in this article) and am working on a lapbook project to teach several fundamental Geometry skills through the use of a Geoboard.*
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We have a whole stash of “math toys” that come with the workbooks provided by RightStart Mathematics, and I’ve been introducing them to my kids slowly, giving them a chance to play around with them and discover how they work, as well as begin to discover some basic math concepts.
Earlier I wrote about our big “aha moments” when I introduced the balance scale. You can read more about that here, as well as access a printable that I created to go along with our learning adventures: Combinations of 5 and 10.
Geoboard Geometry
This time I gave them a pile of rubber bands and a blank geoboard and let them play.
*By “geoboard,” I am referring to the common math manipulative with pegs on a board used most commonly for creating shapes with rubber bands, not the trademarked term “GeoBoard” used in the construction industry.
Superman got really into it, making all kinds of shapes, then building shapes inside shapes.
I asked him if he knew the names for the shapes he was making; as he designed things, we talked about the vocabulary that described each shape.
We came up with the following list of shapes (and talked about how some shapes fit in more than one of the following categories):
- square
- rhombus
- kite
- quadrilateral
- rectangle
- parallelogram
- trapezoid
- triangle (right / equilateral / isosceles / scalene)
The back of the board is set up for circles. After watching him design a bicycle wheel with spokes, we talked about names for the following elements of his design:
- circle
- radius
- diameter
- sector
- tangent and secant lines
I made up a quick set of cards with names of the shapes we had talked about with the vocabulary term on the front and a diagram on the back. After a brain break, we cleared the boards and went through the cards, seeing how many he could re-create based on the names/vocab terms.
Discovery-based learning
This activity turned out to be a fun introduction to a ton of geometry concepts, and served my intended purpose of keeping math fun and leading into concepts with discovery-based learning. I’m excited to work through the workbooks this year and pull these math manipulatives out again as we go through the lessons.
RighStart does a fantastic job of building their lessons around hands-on activities and scaffolding lessons to build a strong foundation in fundamental math concepts. I believe that introducing the provided manipulatives in a fun, playful way (with a bit of challenge built in) will help students build connections and make sense of math in a powerful way.
Extension Activities
We extended these ideas over the next couple days with a few impromptu activities:
- Kitchen Shape Search: We walked around the kitchen, looking for shapes we had talked about using the Geoboards.
- Break-a-Shape: We sketched diagrams of shapes and “broke them” into other smaller shapes. A square, for example, could be made from 2 rectangles or 2 right triangles or 4 isosceles triangles.
A lapbook activity set
I later went back to this activity and created a set of vocab flashcards organized by category for the geometric designs you can build on a Geoboard. Based on my years teaching high school Geometry, my “teacher gears” kept spinning and I developed these ideas further into a complete lapbook set that covers a lot of the main topics from Geometry – all centered around Geoboard activities.
I recently finished the lapbook unit and posted it in my store. You can see the full product here:
I also wrote a blog post describing each activity in the lapbook with pictures of the 7 different sections. You can read more about it here: Geometry Activities: A Geoboard Geometry Lapbook Unit.
Free Geoboard Geometry vocab cards
Here is a link to my (updated) set of free vocab cards as a sample of the full product. It is an 18 page pdf file with a complete set of vocab terms with diagrams broken up by category, and a corresponding set of terms without diagrams for older kids to use. Free Vocab Cards: Geoboard Geometry vocab cards
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You may also be interested in these hands-on, interactive learning activities:
Math Curriculum Recommendation
Are you looking for a Math curriculum that is built around hands-on activities designed to help your children or students discover the Why behind Math and enjoy the learning process?
We use, love, and highly recommend RightStart Mathematics! You can read more about our experience with the RightStart Math curriculum here:
… or check out their sight directly here (by clicking on the image below):
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