Shapes, Shapes and More Shapes

This week in math we continued to look at 2-dimensional shapes. We read aloud Grandfather Tang's Story, written by Ann Tompert, and explored tangram and composing animals just like the characters in the story. We learned that it was originated in China a very long time ago, and it was a popular game/puzzle that was shared by children. In addition to tangram, we also made shapes on geoboards. Our mathematicians stretched out and shrunk the elastic band to make various geometric shapes in different sizes. Today they were given a challenge: to use only 1 elastic band and make sure it wraps around the peg(s) to make a circle and oval. Many of them found it challenging. Many of our mathematicians came up with a conjecture that it is impossible to make a round shape on a geoboard with the given parameters because "pegs" create vertices and round shapes like circle and oval have no vertices.