Nets of Solids (Common 3D shapes)
This activity teaches the basics of Visual-Spatial Intelligence. Students learn how to visualize a solid 3D shape from its net.
A "Geometry Net" is a flattened out three-dimensional solid (a three-dimensional shape) -- like a cube, a prism, or a pyramid. When you cut out the "net", fold it, and glue it together you can see what the three-dimensional shape looks like.
When I was a special education teacher, most of my students had difficulty with academic tasks involving either words or numbers (or both). However, many of these kids were gifted artists, cartoonists, Lego experts, mechanics, visualizers, and in other ways demonstrated competence in visual-spatial thinking.
~ Thomas Armstrong.
Instructions
- Guess the 3D shape that results from "folding" the given 2D image.
- Drag the correct 3D shape to the box.
Objectives for this activity:
- Students should be able to recognize different unique nets for a cube, cuboid, triangular prism, and tetrahedron.
- Students should be able to construct a net to scale for any regular prism.