Upside Down World

Curriculum Goal

Identify congruent lengths, angles, and faces of three-dimensional objects by mentally and physically matching them and determine if the objects are congruent.
Describe the relative positions of several objects and the movements needed to get from one object to another.

Pre-assembled structures made of multilink cubes (with each structure increasing in difficulty)
Multilink cubes

Tell students they are going to imagine a world where everything is made of multilink cubes!
- Show children four buildings that are in this imaginary upside-down world. It is their job to rebuild them the right side up!
Provide each student the appropriate number and colour of unifix cubes. Rebuild the first building as a class.
- Ask one student to give instructions to the rest of the class.
- Have students compare their finished building to the original to ensure it was built correctly.
After students are familiarized, place students in pairs and have one partner give instructions while the other builds.
- Have students sit back-to-back to focus on describing location using positional language.
- Have students put their buildings right side up next to the original building.
Facilitate a discussion about which part of the building was easiest to explain and which parts were more difficult.

Do children use positional language (e.g., under, over, above, below, left, right)?
Can children accurately picture what the upside-down building would look like right side up?
Do children use gestures when visualizing how to turn the building right side up?