Classify 3D shapes according to their properties with this digital drag-and-drop activity.
Explore the Properties of 3D Shapes
Once your students can successfully recognise and name the most common 3D shapes, it’s time to move on to teaching them the properties (features) of these geometric figures. The most common properties attributed to three-dimensional shapes are faces, edges and vertices.
This interactive activity provides an opportunity for students to classify and sort a variety of three-dimensional shapes according to their properties. Some of the activities include:
- Sort the shapes by those that have less than 5 faces and those that have more than 5 faces.
- Sort the shapes by those that have less than 5 edges and those that have more than 5 edges.
- Sort the shapes by those that have less than 5 vertices and those that have more than 5 vertices.
- Explain how the shapes have been sorted in the boxes at the bottom of the slide and give each group a title.
The three-dimensional shapes included in this resource are:
- Cone
- Cube
- Cylinder
- Rectangular prism
- Square pyramid
- Sphere
- Triangular prism
- Triangular pyramid
Extend This 3D Shapes Activity
This resource looks deceptively simple at first glance… but there are multiple options for further learning opportunities!
Once you have completed the activity, challenge your students to create their own slides with pre-sorted groups based on any attributes. These could then be shared with the class to determine the title of the groups and to jointly construct an explanation of how the shapes have been sorted.
Digital Lessons Made Easy… Just Download, Project, Teach!
Use the Download button to access the Google Slides version of this resource.
A printable PDF document containing answers can be accessed via the dropdown menu.
Be sure to use this presentation in Edit mode in order to enable the drag-and-drop features.
This resource was created by Liz Whitaker, a teacher in South Carolina and a Teach Starter collaborator.
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