Radical Rectangle

Today we started our new shape, rectangle. I gave each child a laminated rectangle and we talked about what it looked like and things that are shaped like rectangles. I asked the children what other shape had four sides--they got it--square! I then asked them what made the square and rectangle different. These guys are good, they told me because a rectangle's sides are long and short.

Just to make sure we were all on the same page, I gave each child a square and we did some comparisons. We laid the square on top of the rectangle to notice the difference.

Here's our rectangle song: (To the tune of London Bridge)

Two sides long and two sides short

Two sides long

Two sides short

Two sides long and two sides short

I'm a rectangle.

We then traveled the room to look for rectangles. Thank goodness this is much easier to do with a rectangle than with the triangle.

We headed to the tables for cutting practice. I always have the children trace over their names before we begin--to help with name recognition. I started to notice during other times of the day that many of them can even write their names. Seven out of the 14 can now write their names by themselves--my genius'. I have done nothing more than have their names available to them. I think it's great though.

Finally we made our new page for our shape book. We cut out the rectangle--only down to about 2 that still have trouble--glued it to a piece of paper and added our song. All done for the day.