What is a line? What are polygons? How are they related? – Those were some of today’s thoughts and investigations!
A polygon is a figure that is closed with straight lines, regular or irregular shaped. A line is a straight one-dimensional figure having no thickness and extending infinitely in both directions.
I asked the boys to find a polygon in the room. One answer was the rug we were sitting on, the walls, the windows and the best I thought was- the groove in the marble on the fireplace!
So why is this important and worth spending a morning on? Well, for starters it’s the beginnings of geometry and geometric terminology. Polygons and lines are used in everyday life- mapping out land, engineers use them, painters use them, gardeners use them! They are applicable in almost everything that we do that requires the planning of materials for a structure or of a space.
We read two great books about lines and then I handed them each a large piece of yarn for them to create their own images using a line.
tracing his finger along- bonus for pre -writing skills!
a bird shape
it’s a man!
making loops
Then we did a few activities in our Kaleidoscope math book. Using a mirror and the images of triangles, in the reflected images, regular polygons were seen! Polygons can have 3 sides up to 12 sides.
After viewing several of these – What would happen if our mirror included more than one central angle? A heptagon was now seen!
We then took a break and read some poetry together and then I worked with Luke while Liam worked in him fraction workbook.
Sticking with lines; we did a tactile activity. I asked him to make lower case letters using the wiki sticks as we read an alphabet book.
He then went on to make his own cross-bow with them afterwards- came out cool!
Line and polygon art-
They used wave lines and then filled in the waves using as many lines as they could think of.
Then Liam ended his morning with a coding lesson, learning about artist sequence. Look- it’s lines and polygons! 😉
