Upside Down World

Primary (Age 6 – 9)

Curriculum Goal

Primary: Geometry and Spatial Sense

  • 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.

Context

Part of our spatial toolkit...

Materials

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

Lesson

  • 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.

Look Fors

  • 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?

Extension

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