All teachers know that in the week or two before winter break the kids are so full of energy and excitement, it can make for chaos. I try to do some fun, hands on things and creative projects in December to harness some of that energy and excitement into something productive.
One of the skills in Math I really want to work on this year is spatial reasoning. It is a skill that is easy to overlook, but one that many kids today I think lack. I am finding many students even in middle school still struggle with underdeveloped fine motor skills and spatial reasoning.
Well, I found this project on TeachersPayTeachers that looked like a lot of fun.
The project is for the kids to design a model of the North Pole and build a 3D model of their design. The packet also comes with Language Arts extensions to do some writing assignments and a presentation. We used it for math, so we just did the design and the model. It also had a great alternate assignment to use the South Pole for the kids who do not celebrate Christmas.
They came out really cute though, and they had a lot of fun with it. It was a great hands on project that required logic, creativity, and spatial reasoning. They have this whole big list of requirements to meet that really challenge them.
My next goal in the Spring is to some type of project with Architecture. I am hoping to incorporate some real world examples and maybe some photography and end with building something. How do you incorporate spatial reasoning in your classroom?
