Transforming Three-Dimensional Shapes with Child 36 (Early Math Collaborative)

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This child flips and rotates triangular prism-shaped blocks to match a given arrangement.
Focus on the Child videos are taken from one-on-one interviews with individual children. The interviews are designed to elicit evidence of children’s mathematical thinking. They are not teaching episodes or formal assessments.
Why is this important?
Simple transformations of 3-dimensional shapes through flipping and rotating help children construct the idea that a shape does not change even as they change its position.
BIG IDEA
Shapes can be combined and separated (composed and decomposed) to make new shapes. Opportunities to combine, rotate, and compare shapes will help children develop understanding of part-whole relationships within and among shapes (as when two identical right triangles are combined to make a rectangle).
© Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative. Reprinted from Big Ideas of Early Mathematics: What Teachers of Young Children Need to Know (2014), Pearson Education.