Triangle Talk

Triangle talk

Take triangular scraps of paper and glue them to a background to make a town or village, or forest, or mosaic, or people, or animals, or anything! What could be more simple, and yet so full of teachable moments!

For my Daughter I started by asking her to name the shape and count the sides, then I asked her how many sides the next triangle would have. After 5 or so she told me they all had 3. If she hadn't I would have pointed it out to her.

For my son, who already knows the shape, I asked him to name the kind of triangle, I happened to be holding a right triangle in my hand so we talked about angle names. I asked him to find a different right angle in the room (he found the corner of his rectangle paper). I also asked him to name the other angles on the triangle (acute meaning sharp, obtuse meaning wide/dull).

For an older child, (or with more time), I might have had them help make the triangles. (I just used old scraps I had). Or we may have spent more time on isosceles (two sides the same) vs. equilateral (all three the same or equal).

For a younger child I may have focused on the colors. Or on the number of legs to make a dog, or duck. I also pointed out when they matched triangles up, both when they found two the same, and when they put some together to make kites, or parallelograms. This time, I was right there with them, gluing my own dog, person and tree. But many days I only sit with them for a minute pointing out some interesting things then commenting from my dishes, or laundry stack. I think with is better, but we can't have it all!

Next time I might try using different shapes, like all trapezoids, or all hearts, or combining shapes hexagons and parallelograms.