2-D Shape Castles

Last week I wrote about "academic art" in response to reading a chapter in the book Worksheets Don't Build Dendrites.  You can read that post here.

When searching for ideas that were a little more than your basic 2-D shape work, I came across a pin by an art teacher for making shape castles.  I cut many 3x3 from brightly colored construction paper then cut these in half to create triangles.  The triangles were put at the art center with black construction paper.  Students were given the direction to create a castle using the triangles.  I told them that they can use triangles to form squares and that they should try putting them together in different ways to see what they could make.

Here are a few examples of student work:

When we move into 3-D shapes, I plan to have students make castles using 3-D shapes as well so they can see the differences between 2-D and 3-D shapes.  I'm hoping that them seeing 2 things that they made side-by-side it will help them see what makes something 2-D and what makes something 3-D.  We'll be back with that project in a few weeks!

What do you do to engage your students in 2-D shapes learning?