Gum Drops, and Toothpicks, and Polyhedra OH MY!

In class this past week we learned of what geometric solids and polyhedra are by going through 6 different stations that included hands-on activities electronically (I-pads) and on paper. With each individual activity, the overall common goal was to find and look for the relationship between vertices, faces, and edges. One of the stations that was in the rotation was the Gumdrop Polyhedra. I will explain what and how to do the activity in a lesson plan type format to be able to use in my future class.

Materials needed: 
-Bags of gumdrops
-Toothpicks
-Colored paper of instructions (picture below)

-Blue fact cards (picture below)

Instructions: 
- Using gumdrops and toothpicks and the picture below, create and build different models of polyhedra.
- While you are building the polyhedra be sure to fill out the fact cards.
-Fact cards: blue pieces of paper, fill out the shapes name, draw a picture of the shape, count the number of vertices, faces, and edges and record each and also draw the shape of the faces.
- The gumdrops as the representing a vertice and the toothpicks are representing an edge.
- Construct each polyhedron on the piece of paper which include: Cube, triangular pyramid (tetrahedron), square pyramid, triangular prism, pentagonal prism
- After you create each polyhedron fill out the fact cards using those models to get a better visual and also try to look for a relationship between vertices, faces, and edges.
- Discuss the relationship between vertices, faces, and edges

The finished product

This activity and the rest of the activities were so hands-on and truly helped me understand and truly visual polyhedra and how they connect to each other and the real world. I think that this gumdrop activity is perfect for any age because it can be easily manipulated into something less complex or even more difficult. I truly enjoyed this activity and I know that I will be able to use it in my future classroom.

Helpful link: https://illuminations.nctm.org/activity.aspx?id=3521
This link takes you to a website that students can interact virtually with geometric solids and polyhedrons.