Kids love geometry. It’s so hands-on. At least, it should be. I can’t imagine trying to teach kids geometry without letting them draw, cut, design, build. 3-D geometry taught on paper? I don’t think so!

Unless, of course, you’re designing nets. And that’s exactly what I did with a group of sixth graders. We were working on volume and I thought it would be fun to re-design the soda can. It required a lot of hands-on work that involved graph paper, lots of rice, calculators, scissors, and tape. Students also needed an understanding of the formulas for the area of geometric shapes and the formulas for volume of various polyhedrons. (Video lesson coming soon.)

The project took about four class periods. A few days after the project was complete, one of the girls in the class, Sarah, showed me the above net.

“Guess what it is?” she said. I was trying to wrap by brain around it when she blurted out, “It’s the letter ‘s’!”

Sure enough, when I folded it, it was, indeed, the letter ‘s’. ‘S’ for Sarah.

“I’ve done every letter of the alphabet,” she then said.

“All 26 letters?” I was astounded.

“Yup. All of them.”

I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I’ve known Sarah since the third grade, and all she’s talked about is being an astronaut. She loves math and science. She’s motivated and persistent. One day, I’m going to get a letter from her and the postmark is going to be the moon. Uh, that’s if Gingrich gets elected. 🙂