Saturday, SAVY Day 1 “Spatial Smarts with Ms. Slick” (1st/2nd)
Dear SAVY Families,
We had an exciting and energetic first day in Spatial Smarts yesterday! Our young mathematicians began the day by building a strong classroom community. We shared our names, grades, schools, and something we love—this helped us connect and learn more about each other. Ask your child what one of their classmates enjoys doing!
Once we got to know each other, we jumped into our exploration of dimensions. Using a frog cutout named Bob the Frog, we visualized how a point moves through 1D, 2D, and 3D spaces—Lineland, Flatland, and Spaceland! This sparked lots of curiosity and great questions. Ask your child how Bob moves in each of these lands!
To deepen our understanding, we engaged in hands-on activities using inch tiles to build a point, a line, a plane, and then a 3D object. Students then used gumdrops and toothpicks to create 2D triangles and were challenged to transform them into 3D triangular prisms. Their problem-solving skills were impressive! We continued our journey into transformations by cutting out L-shaped planes and experimenting with translation, rotation, reflection, and glide reflection on an x-y axis. Ask your child which transformation they enjoyed experimenting with the most!
We wrapped up the day with a deep dive into the concept of symmetry. Using geoboards, students created shapes and worked with partners to divide them into symmetrical halves. They were then challenged to create shapes with exactly one line of symmetry and exactly two lines of symmetry. We ended with a lively discussion about how many lines of symmetry a shape can have—this is their homework for the week! Ask your child what ideas they have so far, and encourage them to explore more before next Saturday.
It was a fantastic day filled with creativity, collaboration, and big mathematical thinking. I’m so proud of how our students embraced new concepts and worked together. I can’t wait to see what discoveries they bring next week as we continue our journey through Spatial Smarts!
Sincerely,
Ms. Slick