Unfolding pyramids

Bella showed us her "transformer" - how the triangle-based pyramid (also called the tetrahedron) can be transformed in two different ways.

So we tried with another shape, the square based pyramid. How many flat shapes could we transform this into (without breaking it into two pieces)?

This was another chance to try and "find them all" and also a great way to become more knowledgeable about 2D and 3D shapes.

We found eight ways. In K3G, here they are:

Actually, someone pointed out that two of these are the same, but just flipped over. Can you see which?

In K3L, we named them, and also voted on which ones were our favourites:

The next day, we looked closely at four of them, and asked which one doesn't belong? The two classes noticed very different things:

K3L

K3G

Afterwards, there was a little time for more open experimentation. It's great to see how fluidly the children are moving between 2D and 3D.

Cookie Cutter Shapes

When EH had his birthday he brought in some lovely brownies for the children in the class.

Children in K3G noticed various things about the icing shapes. 

Then they looked at just four of them, and thought about which one doesn't belong:

EH's mum very kindly lent us the cookie cutters they'd used for making the shapes:

and said it would be OK if we used them with clay. So we rolled out clay.

(We used the wood to make sure the height of the clay was the same all over.)

We left it to dry for a little.

Then we though about how best to cut out the shapes:

And we got to cutting:

Next, we'll be heating the clay up really hot in the kiln at school. And if that works, we'll be painting them with glaze.

Watch this space!