Fun with Geometry

What a CrAzY week month it has been so far!  (Notice the lack of posts!)  This week along with the 100th day of school, I had my yearly principal evaluation.  My principal said he wanted to sit in on 2 - 30 minute lessons, one for math and one for literacy.  I always try to throw some kind of integrated activity into the mix, whether it be math with art, writing with art, writing with math, etc.  You get the idea.  Anyway, I thought I would share with you what it was I chose to do.
Lesson 1 (Math)
In the chapter of math, which we just finished, we have been learning about 2-D and 3-D shapes so I wanted to do a lesson that would reinforce what we have been learning about.  To start out, I read the story The Greedy Triangle. 

In case you are unfamiliar with this story, it's about a triangle who becomes dissatisfied with his shape and asks to be transformed into another shape.  He goes from being a triangle to a quadrilateral, from quadrilateral to pentagon, from pentagon to hexagon and so on until he becomes a decagon (10 sided figure).  Eventually he realizes that he was most happy being himself, the triangle.  Because I knew that some of the words would be unfamiliar to my students, I made this anchor chart to look at before reading the story. 

We discussed how a quadrilateral is any 2-D shape with 4 sides and drew a few as examples.
After reading the story I told the kids that I was going to give them about 10 minutes to create a snowflake using only the 5 die cut shapes provided.  They could use a triangle, hexagon, square, rhombus (a fancy word for diamond), and a trapezoid to complete their snowflakes.  (I found the idea on A Place Called Kindergarten).  I told them they had to be as unique about aking their snowflakes as real snowflakes are and that they needed to fill up the whole 8 x 8 blue construction paper square.  The kids did a great job at not only creating their snowflakes, but also being UNIQUE! 

Once they completed their snowflakes, I gave each student a chart where they filled out how many of each shape they used.  We then graphed the shapes used by the class to determine which shape was used the most and which one was used the least.  The kids had fun with this activity and it was a good variation from using only the math book all the time!!
Here are a few more shapes ideas which could be used for a math lesson:

3-D shape poem from Lil' Country Kindergarten

Why not teach your studnets about 3-D shapes but taking a snack break! 

Idea from Busy Bees

Mrs. Plant's Press also had some super ideas for teaching her kindergarteners about 3-D shapes!  She also suggested using food to teach, but I love her anchor chart!

Make a shape collage like the one found at Miss Renee's Kindergarten Pad.

FREE shape poems from TpT!  Thanks Skipper's Jungle!

A shape flip book foldable by Kindergarten Crayons.