Illustrative Mathematics
3-D Shape Sort
From the apple on your desk and the coffee cup in your hand, to the cabinets along the classroom wall, basic three-dimensional shapes are found everywhere in the world around us. Introduce young mathematicians to the these common figures...
American Museum of Natural History
Thinking in the Three Dimensions
Discover different dimensions with paper folding. Pupils first read about zero, one, two, and three dimensions, and then learn about the fourth dimension, time. They then use origami to create models of shapes in three dimensions and use...
North Carolina State University
Shapes
Expose youngsters to 3-D objects in a hands-on learning activity involving marshmallows and toothpicks. Engage your young mathematicians by introducing them to 3-D shapes by means of a story book. Explore 3-D shapes by manipulating...
Teach Engineering
Seeing All Sides: Orthographic Drawing
How can your draw three-dimensional figures on paper? The lesson shows pupils how to draw orthographic projections of three-dimensional figures composed of cubes. After viewing a PowerPoint presentation, they practice this skill with...
Star Date
Shadow Play
Three activities make up a solar system lesson that features the sun, its light, and the shadows it produces. Scholars step outside to discover the changes shadows make at different times of day, take part in a demonstration of...
Perkins School for the Blind
Baseball
Baseball is an American pastime, super fun to play, and can be made accessible to learners with visual impairments. Instead of taking to the ball field, your class can learn the rules of the game by playing a small three-dimensional...
Teach Engineering
Cell Membrane Color Sheet and Build a Cell Membrane
A cell of another color is still a cell. Pupils color a cell to identify its structures in the fourth segment of a seven-segment series. Groups work together to build a three-dimensional cell membrane segment, which is combined with...
Illustrative Mathematics
Christo’s Building
Hook your charges on how to solve a real-world art problem with mathematics by showing works of Christo. You can find eye-catching images on the Christo and Jeanne Claude webpage. Here, math learners help Jean Claude and Christo prepare...
101 Questions
Sticky Stickies
Don't let your classes get stuck on area calculations—grab their attention with an inquiry-based lesson! Scholars must develop a plan to determine how may sticky notes it takes to cover the surface of a door. They decide on the...
It's About Time
Concentrating on Collisions
How important is momentum? Pupils investigate and apply the definition of momentum as they conduct analyses during a series of one-dimensional collisions. They infer the relative masses of two objects by carefully staging and predicting...
Teach Engineering
Connect the Dots: Isometric Drawing and Coded Plans
Individuals discover how to draw cubes on triangle-dot paper. They use cubes to build structures and draw corresponding isometric drawings on dot paper in the second lesson of the series of five. The activity also introduces the concept...
Adrian College
The Universe
Young scientists create a simulation of Hubble's law. Introducing the Big Bang Theory using balloons and a simple lab instructional activity, scholars complete a data table and perform analysis.
Curated OER
Task: Miniature Golf
"Fore!" All right, no one really yells this out in miniature golf, but this well-defined activity will have your charges using lots of numbers in their unique design of a miniature golf hole. Included in the activity criteria is the...
Curated OER
Task: Grain Storage
Farming is full of mathematics, and it provides numerous real-world examples for young mathematicians to study. Here, we look at a cylinder-shaped storage silo that has one flat side. Given certain dimensions, students need to determine...
Indian Institute of Technology
Could King Kong Exist?
The title says it all: Could King Kong exist? Investigate how increasing the dimensions of an object affects its surface area and volume to mathematically conclude whether a creature with the weight and height of King Kong could actually...
Curated OER
Narrow Corridor
Buying a new sofa? Learn how to use the Pythagorean Theorem, as well as algebra and graphing techniques, to determine whether the sofa will fit around a corner (which I'm sure you'll agree is a very important consideration!).
Chandler Unified School District
Art Masterpiece—Leonardo da Vinci Inventions
After getting to know the inventor, Leonardo da Vinci and his many inventions, scholars think up their own invention. Following a written description and a hand-drawn picture, learners use a method of mirror writing and antiquing to give...
Canton Museum of Art
Personal Clay Box
High schoolers will love this geometrically exact ceramics project; they create a personalized clay box using the slab method and mathematical measurements. They utilize scoring and square construction and can decorate the boxes to...
The New York Times
Perspective and Leonardo’s “Perspectograph”
Filippo Brunelleschi's invention of linear perspective during the Renaissance was further developed by his apprentice, a young artist named Leonardo da Vinci. Now modern artists can give da Vinci's famous perspectograph a try...
NorthEast Ohio Geoscience Education Outreach
Introduction to Density
Seventh grade scientists weigh in on the concept of density. In a nutshell, they participate in the following activities:
Measurement of the mass and volume of fruit in order to compare densities
Measurement of the mass of oil and water...
Technovation
Curiosity Machine: Challenges: Make Drawings of Three Dimensional Objects
Using the Glass Box Theory, students will make scaled technical drawings of 3D objects. This site includes the challenge, tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their engineering design process.
Other
Coloring 3 D Sides
Students use the colored portion of the 2-D drawings to color the correct face of the 3-D model. This applet consists of 20 problems. [Requires Java.]
University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge: Nrich: Three Cubed
Use the shapes provided and figure out how they fit together to make a 3 X 3 cube at this one page website. The solution is readily available right at the website.
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Copying an Angle
Explore relationships (including congruence and similarity) among classes of two- and three-dimensional geometric objects, make and test conjectures about them, and solve problems involving them.