Polygon Paradise

We've started a unit on geometry--which is all about shapes and solids.  Shapes are 2 dimensional things and solids are 3 dimensional objects.  Our teacher read us a book called "The Greedy Triangle" by Marilyn Burns. 

In the story, the triangle gets tired of all his jobs and wants to be different.  So, he goes to the shape shifter and every time, he gets one more angle and one more side.  He ends up having so many sides and angles that he rolls down a hill and so he decides he wants to go back to being a triangle.  This book showed us all of the different polygons--quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, octagons, nonagons and decagons--and in a really fun way!  Each polygon also talked about where it can be found in the real world.

Then it was time for us to try making some polygons.  We worked with a buddy and a big piece of string to make the polygons our teacher asked for.

 Above: These boys have made a triangle.

 Above: These boys have made a quadrilateral.

Above: These girls have made a special kind of quadrilateral called a rectangle.

We really had to work together when it came time to make hexagons and octagons!  It was really tricky when we were asked to make them with sides of equal length.

Next, we used geoboards to create polygons.  Can you tell what the names of these are?

And finally, we had to create all of the different polygons on our geoboards and then draw them on dot paper.  Each type of polygon was drawn with a different color on our sheet.

We were wondering...
What activities have you done to learn about polygons?
Where do you see the different polygons in the real world?
What is your favorite polygon and why?