Teaching quadrilaterals to kids can be the perfect mix of fun and effective when you use hands-on quadrilateral activities that excite students about geometry! Understanding quadrilaterals, identifying their attributes, and classifying are important skills that will provide a solid foundation for other geometry concepts. But it’s all in the approach.
Enhance your instruction with five activities designed to increase student interest and add creativity so they deeply understand and engage with your quadrilateral lessons.
An effective way to introduce quadrilaterals is by using a quadrilateral anchor chart. This chart visually organizes each quadrilateral, highlighting the specific attributes that define them. As you review each shape (square, rectangle, trapezoid, parallelogram, etc.), students can follow along by filling in blank charts.
These personalized charts will help students understand each shape and can be glued into their math notebooks to be a useful resource they can return to throughout the year. You can also incorporate this fun quadrilateral family chart I’ve used in the past.
Make learning about quadrilaterals more interactive with this Quadrilateral Mystery activity. Students work with a partner, solving shape-related puzzles using task cards. Each card describes a quadrilateral’s attributes, and students must work together to identify which shapes fit the description.
After selecting the correct shapes, students record their answers on a chart. This activity encourages critical thinking and collaboration while reinforcing the ability to classify quadrilaterals based on their unique properties.
This tasty quadrilateral activity, Ready? Build! Draw!, takes quadrilaterals off the page and into a hands-on experience. Students start by spinning a shape name and then work with partners to build the shape on grid paper using licorice (or pipe cleaners) as the sides. After the quadrilateral is built, they draw it using an expo marker.
Excitement builds as students see how shapes of different sizes can still share the same attributes. Two squares may look different in size but will still be classified as squares!
Students can take their geometry skills to new heights with this rocket-building activity. Students build a rocket ship using quadrilateral pieces, then analyze the shapes they’ve used.
They’ll count and classify each quadrilateral on their rocket, filling in a chart that tracks how many of each shape they included.
For this activity, students will create an interactive flap book in their notebooks. They will cut and glue the pieces to create flaps, then spin a shape spinner to pick a quadrilateral name.
Students will draw the quadrilateral on grid paper then, underneath the flap, students write the name and attributes of their selected shape.
This activity offers a great way for students to apply what they’ve learned while organizing their notes visually and interactively.
Hey, y’all! My name is Amy Lemons and I am passionate about providing students with both engaging and effective standards-based Math and ELA lessons.
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One Response
This looks like a very involved way to learn and that is huge. Is there a way to purchase just this quadrilateral unit prior to purchasing the entire bundle? Thank you for sharing these great ideas.