Upside Down World
Age group
- Primary (Age 6 to 9)
Curriculum Goal
Primary: Geometry and Spatial Sense
- Identify congruent lengths, angles, and faces of three-dimensional objects by mentally and physically matching them and determine if the objects are congruent.
- Describe the relative positions of several objects and the movements needed to get from one object to another.
Related Links
Context
- Students and the teacher begin by sitting on the floor in a circle.
- Building with the Mind’s Eye for previous lesson.
Materials
- Pre-assembled structures made of multilink cubes (with each structure increasing in difficulty)
- Multilink cubes
Lesson
- Tell students they are going to imagine a world where everything is made of multilink cubes!
- Show children four buildings that are in this imaginary upside-down world. It is their job to rebuild them the right side up!
- Provide each student the appropriate number and colour of unifix cubes. Rebuild the first building as a class.
- Ask one student to give instructions to the rest of the class.
- Have students compare their finished building to the original to ensure it was built correctly.
- After students are familiarized, place students in pairs and have one partner give instructions while the other builds.
- Have students sit back-to-back to focus on describing location using positional language.
- Have students put their buildings right side up next to the original building.
- Facilitate a discussion about which part of the building was easiest to explain and which parts were more difficult.
Look Fors
- Do children use positional language (e.g., under, over, above, below, left, right)?
- Can children accurately picture what the upside-down building would look like right side up?
- Do children use gestures when visualizing how to turn the building right side up?
Extension
- Barrier Game for next lesson.