Investigations

Building Skeletons

  1. Look around your home for materials to build skeletons of 3D figures. (e.g., straws and play dough, toothpicks and marshmallows, rolled-up newspaper and tape)
  2. Help your child with building skeletons of some three-dimensional figures.

After you finish building a figure ask:

  • How many edges does your three-dimensional figure have?
  • How many vertices (corners) does your three-dimensional figure have?
  • Can you see any 2D shapes in your skeleton? How many? (e.g., square, rectangle, triangle
  • Can you find an object around our home that looks like the three- dimensional skeleton we made?

I Spy 3D Figures

Go for a walk outside and play I Spy to identify 3D figures:

  • “I spy rectangular prisms on that porch.”
  • “I spy a square based pyramid on top of that house.”
  • “I spy a car that looks like a cube.”
  • “I spy a curved 3D figure we didn’t make. I think it’s called a cylinder.”