When your children work on 3-D shapes from a mathematics textbook, do you sometimes wonder about the properties of some of the shapes? Does a cone have a vertex? How many faces has a sphere? How many edges has a cylinder? If you ask a mathematician the answer to such questions, the mathematician may direct you to the definition of a vertex, a face or an edge. Or the mathematician may ask you the purpose for wanting to classify the shapes in this way.
In order to resolve this in a way that works in a primary school classroom, I have compiled a list of definitions and a grid on which to record information about a series of 3-D shapes. I want to share it with you in the hope that it will be of help in your classroom. Here are the definitions. Here is the empty grid; try completing this first. Here is the completed grid.
Please comment below if you have any other suggestions about resolving such questions in your mathematics lessons.
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