Recommended Age: 2 and ½ to 5 years
Level of Parent Involvement: Medium during initial presentation, low once the child has been shown and can work independently
Prerequisites
- The child must have some knowledge of the basic 2-dimensional shapes such as triangle, square, circle, rectangle etc (in a Montessori environment the child would have had many experiences working with the shapes in the geometry cabinet before being introduced to geometric solids)
Materials
- 1 sphere (for example a ball, or an orange)
- 1 cube (wooden block, a box)
- 1 cone (an ice cream cone, you can make a cone by wrapping a piece of paper around itself and securing with sticky tape)
- A basket to keep the geometric forms
Note: the objects you chose to represent the geometric forms of a sphere, a cube and a cone should be the clearest representation possible so that the child gains a concrete impression of the geometric form.
Preparation
- Place the geometric solids in the basket
Steps
- Invite the child, showing them the basket of geometric solids
- The child may bring the basket of geometric solids to the table, sit to the right of the child
- Take the sphere out of the basket and feel with both hands all the way around
- Invite the child to feel
- Place the sphere on the table in front of the child
- Feel the sphere again as above this time stating “this is a sphere, you may feel the sphere”
- Child feels the sphere, naming it as they feel
- Repeat as above for the cube and the cone, first feeling the geometric solid without naming, inviting the child to feel, then feel and name, invite the child to feel and name
- Do a 3-period lesson with sphere, cube and cone, giving the child experience in differentiating between the solids until they can successfully name them
- Once the child can correctly name the 3 geometric solids let the child know you are now going to play an environment game
- Starting with the sphere let the child know that you are going to go for a walk around the environment and look for something which is the same shape as the sphere
- Invite the child to walk around with you, find something which is the same shape as the sphere for example, an apple, globe etc
- Bring the item to the table and compare the item you have found with the sphere noticing with the child they are both spheres
- Invite the child to find another sphere in the environment and bring to the table
- Once you have exhausted all options move onto the next solid, going with the child the first time to find an object in the environment which is a cube
- Repeat for the cone
- When you have a collection of spheres, cubes and cones, help the child return the objects to their place in the environment
- The child may put the original objects back into the basket
- Let the child know they may now do this activity independently on another day (encouraging repetition)
Variations
- An older child may like to write or draw the objects they have found after collecting them
- Once the child can identify and match the geometric solids sphere, cube and cone introduce 3 more
(cylinder, rectangular prism, triangular prism, pyramid, ellipsoid, ovoid and tetrahedron)
