Teach Elementary Geometric Shapes and Solids
Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin Math and Science Lesson Plan
Oct 13, 2008
Use The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin in a math and science lesson about recognizing and comparing three-dimensional solids and exploring forces and motion.
Use the book The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano [Sterling Publishing, 2001] to teach elementary children about two-dimensional shapes, three-dimensional solids, and the physical laws governing forces and motion.
Objectives
- Students will identify, discuss, and form different geometric two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional solids.
- Students will experiment with how different geometric solids can move.
Lesson Focus
- Pass around a cube and a sphere. Have students compare and contrast their shapes.
- Using a flat surface, demonstrate how a sphere moves by rolling and how a cube can move by flipping from face to face.
Introduce, Identify, and Discuss Two-Dimensional Geometric Shapes
- Share The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin, possibly as part of a lesson on rhyming couplets.
- Discuss why Spookley is a "square" pumpkin. Pass around a cardstock square and identify characteristics of a square (four corners, four equal sides).
- Have students identify "round" circular, "rectangular," and "triangular" pumpkins in the book. Pass around and discuss cardstock circles (no corners, no sides), rectangles (four corners, four sides with opposite sides of equal lengths) and triangles (three corners, three sides).
- For assessment, have students cut out and label a circle, a square, a rectangle, and a triangle.
Introduce, Identify, and Discuss Three-Dimensional Geometric Solid Figures
- Pass around a sphere, an ovoid (or egg-shaped) solid, and a small round pumpkin. Have students compare the three objects to each other and to the way the "round pumpkins" are drawn in the book.
- Discuss how spheres and ovoids are round, with no corners or edges.
- Pass around a cube. Discuss how it is made up of squares and has many corners and edges.
- Pass around other geometric solids that match pumpkins in the book, such as a rectangular prism and a triangular prism.
- For assessment, have students form each geometric solid out of orange clay.
- For an extension activity, pass around and discuss geometric solids not featured in the book, such as cylinders, cones, pyramids, hemispheres, hexagonal prisms, and octagonal prisms.
Preparation: Create a model of the fence from the book by folding cardboard in half to make a fence corner and then cutting and folding back a triangular section to represent the gap.
- Ask students to predict what will happen if you roll a sphere at the gap in the fence. Roll the sphere and check predictions.
- Place a sphere in the gap and ask students to predict what will happen if you roll another sphere at this one. Roll the second sphere and check predictions.
- Flip a cube end over end (the way Spookley moves) to the gap. Ask students to predict what will happen if you roll a sphere at the cube. Roll the sphere and check predictions.
- Compare the results of your experiments with the events in the book.
- For assessment, let students experiment with the spheres and cubes themselves and describe what they discover about how these solids can move.
- For upper elementary students, use vocabulary such as force, motion, inertia, and friction to explain what is happening. For younger students, just focus on encouraging them to develop their powers of observation and ability to describe what happens to the solids in each case.
- For a life science activity, have students place a small growing pumpkin inside a half-gallon milk carton so it will grow into a "square pumpkin."
- For a math activity, have students make a labeled illustrated chart of geometric solid "pumpkins" (cube, rectangular prism, triangular prism, triangular-based pyramid, square-based pyramid, cone, cylinder, sphere). Have advanced students include information about how many faces, edges, and corners (vertexes) each solid has.
Primary teachers can use The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin to introduce students to different kinds of geometric shapes and solids and how these solids move. Use this book also for an art lesson teaching color and texture.
The copyright of the article Teach Elementary Geometric Shapes and Solids in Primary School Lesson Plans is owned by Renee Carver. Permission to republish Teach Elementary Geometric Shapes and Solids in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
