Learning About Trapezoids!

We are also learning about Trapezoids this week (along with the 5 Senses that we're doing this month). As I was thinking about how to make learning about Trapezoids fun for today I stumbled across this great idea on pinterest:

I absolutely loved this painting and decided that it would work for my kids as a creative art project/math project.

To start out the project I introduced trapezoids; we talked about the shape, what it looks like, how it is different from other shapes we have talked about. Then we did a shape sort with trapezoids, squares, circles, rectangles, and triangles.

During the sort I focused on having the kids tell me what the shapes looked like and how they knew they were different from the trapezoid(s).

Next, I showed them some other modern art that uses shapes to create an image or design.

The kids really enjoyed seeing these images and were excited to make their own modern art using trapezoids. Given our limited time for this activity I used a premade trapezoid paper for the kids. You could have the kids trace their own trapezoids onto paper as well and outline with a black marker, or use this template:

Just click on the image, save it to your computer, and print as you would any normal picture.

Then, I had the kids color it with pastels and I lamanated them for the wall! They looked amazing!

I hope you enjoy this project! I think it turned out pretty great!:)

Love,
Bri