2D & 3D Geometry Practice Made Easy with a Fun Craft Project.

Home based geometry practice should be fun, not a hard slog of memorizing geometry formula.  Watching someone, especially a child, rote learning formulae without understanding, is heart breaking!

You are currently on Step 7 of your journey to Mastering Basic Geometry!

Elementary geometry, which is non Euclidian geometry, is the study of 2D and 3D shapes.  Although your child will start by studying two dimensional (2D) shapes, they will quickly move into the realm of 3D geometry.  It is essential that they develop the spatial sense to see the relationship between 2d and 3d geometry. 

Discovering geometry can be a lot of fun if you use the hands on approach of arts and crafts with your child.

Plato is quoted as saying:

“Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”

Activities rather than worksheets amuse children!

One, two dimensional shape, or many two dimensional shapes can be fitted together to make a three dimensional shape. So the Area of the two dimensional shapes become the Surface area of a three dimensional shape.

Use this great (and easy) Craft project to illustrate this to your child

You will need:

  • 1 sheet of cardstock
  • 1 ruler and pencil
  • 1 scissors
  • Sticky tape.
  • 1 child to put it all together!!

On the cardboard, with your ruler and pencil draw two squares of equal size, and six rectangles of equal size.  The short side of the rectangle should be equal to the length of the square.

Using the scissors, cut out the shapes you have drawn.

Ask your child to tape the rectangles and squares together to make a rectangular box.

When complete, your child will have created a 3d geometry shape from 2d geometry shapes. In fact, they will have created a square prism!

Geometry practice can be fun!

Try making other 3D shapes experimenting with different 2D shapes.

Want to try some more?

Using the 3D Nets I provide in the Manipulatives section of this site, you can print ready to cut pieces that fold into beautiful 3D Shapes.

Take the learning a step further!

You can extend this project further.  Ask your child first to find the area of the 2d shapes, then ask them to compose the 3d shape.  Using formula, calculate the Surface Area of the 3d shapes.

Can they find any connection between the area of 2D shapes and the surface of 3D shapes?

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