In this unit, students identify, describe, compare, and create three-dimensional shapes. While working with two-dimensional shapes, students revisit counting, addition, and subtraction. In IM Kindergarten, we refer to two-dimensional shapes as “flat shapes” and three-dimensional shapes as “solid shapes.”

Section A: Put Together and Count with Flat Shapes

In this section, students revisit number concepts while working with pattern blocks. Students practice counting, comparing, and writing numbers, as well as solving story problems. They fill in more difficult pattern-blocks puzzles, which can be completed in more than one way, for example:

Section B: Describe, Compare, and Create Solid Shapes

In this section, students are introduced to solid shapes, and they distinguish between flat and solid shapes. Students identify examples of solid shapes in their environment and work with geoblocks, including cones, cubes, cylinders, spheres, pyramids, and prisms.

While they are introduced to the formal names of solid shapes, students use their own language to describe and compare these shapes. For example, students may say “ball” to refer to a sphere and may compare the “points” of a pyramid and the “curves” of a cone. Students use a variety of materials to create solid shapes and eventually use solid shapes to build a larger creation, such as a tower.

Try it at home!

Near the end of the unit, ask your kindergartener to go on a scavenger hunt to find solid shapes around the house.

Questions that may be helpful as they work:

• Can you find a cone, a cube, a sphere, and a cylinder?
• Can you find something else that has the same shape as this can?
• What is the same about these two (2) shapes that you found? What is different about them?

• Can you find something that you can use to create a cone?

Solution:
Answers may vary.

Sample response:

• We put our ice cream into ice-cream cones. This cardboard box is a cube. My basketball is a sphere. Beans come in cans that are cylinders.
• My cup has the same shape as the can.
• Both are cylinders. They are different sizes. My cup is taller, but the can is heavier.
• I can use a piece of paper to create a cone.