Letters for Geometry

To practice flips (reflections), slides (translations), and turns (rotations), I make the first letter of the children's names, and the students cut them out.  We then use these letters as manipulatives, so that they can demonstrate each movement on their desktop, as I call them out.

These letters can lead into another activity:

Activity link

Dream Bedrooms

To review area and perimeter a fun activity is creating a "Dream Bedroom" on a piece of grid paper.  The kids draw linear items, bed, entertainment center, bookcases, and get very creative, adding in fish tanks, cotton candy machines, etc.  They then have to calculate the area and perimeter of each object or piece of furniture before outlining them in marker and coloring them in.  You can create a bulletin board or class book to flip through and they love to share their rooms with their classmates and friends.  The students also can work on other rooms in a house.

Movement in Geometry

Teaching flips/reflections, slides/translations, and turns/rotations in the Geometry unit.

The students choose a letter, draw it once and cut it out four times (or trace a stencil), then give an example of this letter from a starting point, making each of these movements.

Geometry Flashcards

angle	trapezoid	rectangle
acute angle	obtuse angle	quadrilateral
right angle	equilateral triangle	isosceles triangle
scalene triangle	intersecting lines	rhombus
parallel lines	perpendicular lines	parallelogram

square	sliding	rotating
line of symmetry	turning	translating
flipping	symmetry	symmetric
reflecting	reflection

Collecting Colors

My son is learning his colors, so one activity we do is walk around and collect objects that are that color.  When they are familiar to him, he seems to grasp the idea more easily.  I do the same thing with geometry in the classroom, or assign it for homework.
"Find as many examples of a rectangular prism as you can tonight at home and list them."
- cereal boxes, boxes of pasta, Kleenex box, TV, etc

Here Sam and I are working on collecting blue objects.