NAME ______________________________ DATE _______________

FAMILY LETTER

(PAGE 2 OF 2)

Related Activities to Try at Home

Draw a Building Our class is practicing ways to draw 3-D shapes so that they look like they “pop” off the paper. There are many ways to do this. Ask your child to choose a familiar building—perhaps your house or one that you can see from a window. Talk about the building's shapes and then ask your child to draw and label the building in a way that makes sense to them. Some children like to draw the building from different perspectives, or points of view. Others like to use dotted lines to show what is not visible from the front.

Building with Shapes Gather 3-D building blocks, construction toys, or empty boxes and cans that your child can use to build. Children can try to build particular buildings or even their whole neighborhood. Talk about shapes while they are working. “What would you call the shape you used for the first floor of the bank? What shape(s) will you use for the roof?”

Math and Literature Here are some children's book suggestions that contain geometric ideas. Read them together and discuss the shapes you find.

Bean, Jonathan. Building Our House.

Gauch, Patricia Lee. Christina Katerina and the Box.

Hoban, Tana. Cubes, Cones, Cylinders, & Spheres.

Laroche, Giles. If You Lived Here: Houses of the World.

Macaulay, David. Castle, Cathedral, City, or Pyramid.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Museum Shapes.

Murphy, Stuart J. Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes.

Portis, Antoinette. Not a Box.

Zelver, Patricia. The Wonderful Tower of Watts.

Table of Contents