While the lesson focuses on right triangles, this activity offers a great way to practice the area of all triangles through an interactive webpage. The activity begins with the class taking a square paper and cutting in in half; can they...

Package design is an economic necessity. Young scholars assume the role in an interesting inquiry-based lesson. Given 24 cubic shaped candies to package, they must determine the arrangement that uses the least amount of cardboard to...

The humble soda can gets the geometric treatment in an activity that links math and science calculations. After a few basic assumptions are made and discussed, surface area calculations combine with density information to develop an...

Young geometers and biologists investigate the math of nature in an activity that is just the bee's knees. Participants will study the tessellations of hexagons in a beehive, along with the natural rationale behind the specific shape....

Geometers construct a mobile or ornament using nets of three-dimensional polyhedrons. Not only do they need to compute the volume and surface area of each figure, they also earn points for creativity, neatness, and more!

Every pupil with a sweet tooth will be clamoring for this lab and analysis, particularly when they're allowed to eat the results! Volume and surface area formulas for cones are developed from models, and then extended to the printing of...

You don't need a scale to determine weight. This activity provides a way to use the concepts of air pressure and surface area to determine the weight of a vehicle by calculating the amount of weight each tire supports.

The hunt is on! Send young mathematicians on a search for shapes in the first lesson of this two-part series. Each time a child finds a hidden shape, he draws it on his paper, and continues searching for the rest. Perform this activity...

Is your class ready to size up the topic of diffusion? Help them get cell shape savvy with a well-written handout. The resource covers how substances such as oxygen passively move through the cell membrane and how cell size and shape...

If cubism were a religion, would you follow it? Lower-level tasks focus primarily on counting the number cubes in a structure and relating the number to surface area. As learners progress to higher-level tasks, isometric drawings and...

Add a sense of excitement to your math class with this race across the country. Using their knowledge of all things circular, young mathematicians work in pairs answering a series of pi-related word problems as they hop from one city to...

Wrap up the unit in one final design. Pairs use their knowledge of aviation to design new flying machines and record how their designs take into consideration the forces that act upon airplanes. The pupils determine whether their designs...

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...

Weathering is not necessarily a result of the weather. Scholars conduct an experiment to explore the effect of surface area and volume on the weathering process. They create their own sugar cube rocks using the same number of cubes—but...

What constitutes a good soap bubble? In the second installment of a nine-part series, scholars apply their understanding of surface tension to soap bubbles. They experiment to determine the best solutions to use for the...

Learners are designing a stunning new water feature for an aquarium, but they soon discover that more than just a pretty home for their fishy friends is required.  From calculating the volume of a composite shape through the...

Score some problems all related to soccer balls. The first few problems focus on pattern blocks to see relationships between figures. More advanced problems focus on actual soccer balls, the patterns on the balls, and their volumes and...

A second attack at figuring out the number of leaves on a tree, this activity makes both an excellent follow-up to version 1 and a stand-alone activity. Learners practice setting parameters and deciding acceptable estimate precision, and...

A variety of activities take scholars outside the classroom to explore shapes, symmetry, measurement, patterns, sorting, and time in nature. Learners participate individually, and in teams, to measure found objects, go on a...

Create a protective protein shell as a package. Using the included template, pupils tape together 20 triangles to create a 20-sided shape to represent the protective shell of a virus. The model of the protein shell incases the nucleic...

Take your class out to visit your automobile and use the tires to compute the weight of the vehicle. This is done by measuring the surface of the tire meeting the ground and the air pressure. This is a fun lesson in the relationship...

Stop and drop what is in your hand! Pupils investigate how form effects drag in the 12th part of a 22-part unit on aviation. Groups create equally weighted objects and determine which one falls the fastest by collecting data.

Students engage their critical thinking skills to solve challenging math problems. In these problem solving lessons, student work with tessellations, weights/measurement, reasoning, surface area, geometric shapes, and algebraic procedures.

Explore capillary action from different perspectives. In the fourth installment of a nine-part series, scholars perform several experiments to observe capillary action. They look at the meniscus of water in a glass, observe capillary...