Make a Neighborhood Geoboard
Explore geometric shapes, scaling, perimeters, and polygons with this homemade geoboard.
Materials
Directions
Start creating a neighborhood by cutting out squares and triangles from construction paper to make the buildings. Draw on details with a pen. This is a great activity for an older child to do too. Think of places and the details of the houses that are actually in your own neighborhood to make it more relevant.
Assemble the neighborhood on the corkboard with some repositionable tape. You can either go for a grid or evenly spaced town, if you want to incorporate more math concepts, or make something more simple.
Assign a pushpin for each "stop" in the neighborhood.
Cut a very long piece of string and tie around the starting pushpin.
Now, your child is ready to explore! Here are some ideas
- Storytelling: Have your child tell a story about what happens that day in the neighborhood. What houses and businesses does she travel to and what does she find there? Maybe she meets a friend on the way to get some ice cream or stop by the park.
- Puzzles: Create an agenda for the day and have your child act it out in the neighborhood. Perhaps Mr. Kitty needs to get some groceries today before visiting his sick friend in the blue house. What path should he take to get all his plans accomplished? Or maybe today Mr. Kitty wants to visit only blue houses and trees. What path should he take to do that?
- Roadmaps: This was actually my original idea for the neighborhood. It's a newly built neighborhood with no streets! Connect all the houses with a string path so that Mr. Kitty can visit his favorite places.
Sara is a mother and artist living in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two boys. She believes in nurturing budding imaginations and living one moment at a time. You can find more tutorials on her blog, Kitty Baby Love.
Math