Designing Shapes With Pipe Cleaners
In this lesson, children will use pipe cleaners to create shapes.
Learning Goals:
This lesson will help children meet the following educational standards:
- Demonstrate curiosity about the world and begin to use the practices of science and engineering to answer questions and solve problems
- Explore concepts and information about the physical, earth and life sciences
- Understand important connections and concepts in science and engineering
- Analyze characteristics and properties of two- and three-dimensional geometric shapes and develop mathematical arguments about geometric relationships
- Use visualization, spatial reasoning and geometric modeling to solve problems
Learning Targets:
After this lesson, children should be more proficient at:
- Developing and using models to represent their ideas, observations and explanations through approaches such as drawing, building or modeling with clay
- Expressing wonder and curiosity about their world by asking questions, solving problems and designing things
- Making meaning from experience and information by describing, talking and thinking about what happened during an investigation
- Using nonstandard and standard scientific tools for investigation
- Recognizing, naming, building, drawing, comparing, and sorting two- and three-dimensional shapes
- Describing attributes and parts of two- and three-dimensional shapes
- Creating mental images of geometric shapes using spatial memory and spatial visualization
- Recognizing and representing shapes from different perspectives
Step 1: Gather materials.
- The book, When a Line Bends, a Shape Begins, by Rhonda Growler Greene
- Pipe cleaners (2-3 packages)
- A set of 10 8”x12” shape cards for each child (each card should feature a different shape: circle, square, rectangle, triangle, diamond, oval, star, heart, crescent, and octagon)
Step 2: Introduce activity.
- Explain that you are going to share a book about different shapes. Read the title of the book, When a Line Bends, a Shape Begins. Ask the children what they think the title means.
- Based on the book's title and cover, ask the children if they have any predictions about what will happen in the story.
- Read: When a Line Bends, a Shape Begins.
- As you read aloud, stop and discuss certain parts of the story. For instance, locate and name the shapes in the pictures and identify their characteristics.
- After you've finished reading and discussing the book, ask again: “What do you think the book's title means?"
Step 3: Engage children in lesson activities.
- Explain that the children are going to bend their pipe cleaners into the 10 shapes on their shape cards.
- Review the shapes on the cards with the children.
- Explain that each child will make the 10 shapes on the cards, using the cards as guides.
- Model how to use more than one pipe cleaner to construct a shape.
- Once the shapes are finished, the children can design and create structures with their pipe cleaner shapes.
Step 4: Engineering vocabulary
- Circle: A round shape that has no straight edges or corners, such as a wheel
- Crescent: The shape of the visible part of the moon when it is less than half-full
- Diamond: A rhombus with four equal sides that looks like a slanted square
- Octagon: A polygon with eight sides, such as a stop sign
- Oval: A stretched-out circle that is shaped like an egg
- Rectangle: A four-sided shape with straight sides, interior angles that are right angles (90°), and opposite sides that are parallel and of equal length.
- Shape: A form or outline, such as the shape of a circle
- Square: A shape with four corners and four straight sides that are the same length or size
- Star: A shape that has four or more pointed parts coming out from a center at equal distances
- Triangle: A pointy shape with three sides and three corners, such as a slice of pizza
Suggested Books
- City Shapes by Diana Murray
- Color Farm by Lois Ehlert
- Crescent Moons and Pointed Minarets: A Muslim Book of Shapes by Hena Khan
- Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh
- Round is a Mooncake: A Book of Shapes by Roseanne Thong
- Round is a Tortilla: A Book of Shapes by Roseanne Greenfield Thong
Music and Movement
Outdoor Connections
- There are many hidden shapes on the playground equipment. Can you find them?
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