Susitna Elementary, Anchorage, Alaska

Hello we are First and Second Grader’s from Susitna Elementary.

We went on a shape scavenger hunt on our playground after reading the book Icky Bug Shapes by Jerry Pallotta and illustrated by Sharron Bersani.

We found six very important shapes on our playground:

A triangle

A square

A rectangle

A circle

A hexagon

Our teachers asked us, how did we know that we had found a triangle, a square, a rectangle, a circle, and a hexagon? So we had to prove it.

We found it very tricky so we though we would ask you.

1.What makes a triangle so special?

2.How is a hexagon different than a circle?

3.How can you measure to find out if a circle is really a circle?

4.How is a square different than a rectangle?

5.Is a square a rectangle?

Student Answers:

1. A triangle is special because it has only three sides and three corners (vertices). The triangle on our four square court is a triangle because it has three sides and three corners.

2. A hexagon has six sides and six corners and a circle has no corners. The climbing gym has a hexagon inside it because a hexagon is made of six triangles and it has six triangles. It also has six sides and six corners. It is a hexagon

3. A circle is the same distance from the center to the edge all the way around. We used a string and a marker to check the circle around our tetherball court and it was the same. It is a circle.

4. A square has four sides that are the same and four corners. We used a measuring stick to measure all of the sides of our four square court and they were the same. The four square court is a square.

5. We were not convinced that a square is a rectangle, but we noticed that two squares could make a rectangle. We saw that two squares made a rectangle on our hopscotch court and that a rectangle could have two sides long that were the same length and two sides short that were the same length. We noticed that a square and a rectangle both have four sides and four corners. Is a square a rectangle?