Recently I introduced a polydron activity as an extension to the geometric solids. Polydron is a manipulative construction material that can be used to explore 2 and 3 dimensional geometry and mathematical concept. I played with polydron as a child and spent hours constructing complex geometric shapes and till now I still enjoy playing with it. Little-N has been constructing with it since he was just a year old.
I decided to leave this activity until after the children have learnt all the geometric solids so that they will be familiar with mathematical language that is valuable when working with this.
For the first presentation I simply showed the children how the pieces can click together, I then showed them how to construct a cube. Once the children were able to make cubes, I ask a child to get the geometric solids and waited to see what other shapes they could make. They were able to make most of the straight sided shapes with ease.
While constructing a cube, one child said 'You need six squares for a cube' and another child said 'You need a square and four triangles to make a square based pyramid'. This is precisely the understanding I wanted to see and develop through this material.
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