Marshmallow Geometry

In my usual take-myself-by-surprise fashion we found ourselves constructing 3D geometric shapes this morning over breakfast.  I had got in the supplies – cocktail sticks and mini-marshmallows – a few weeks ago, and had been storing the marshmallows in a tupperware pot since they reached the appropriate point of staleness (apparently this works better when they’re a bit hard).

We started out with some simple shapes.

I was aiming for fractal tetrahedrons a bit like these, but in my spontaneity I didn’t have the instructions to hand and they were trickier than I’d anticipated!  My creation wasn’t very geometric – good discovery learning, though! (I’ve since read that the trick is to start with a flat base instead of a single tetrahedron).

This activity is a delight for kinaesthetic learners – the  materials make for exquisitely lightweight, tactile shapes that, thanks to the squidgy marshmallows, are strong enough to play around with until you’re satisfied with your shape (or decide to give up, for today, on making a fractal tetrahedron).

C came up with some wonderful – and geometric! – shapes.

It made a fabulous ferris wheel on its side!

Which she “signed”.

J made me think of those creativity tests (“How many uses can you think of for a house brick?”) as he reeled off things his models could be (radiator, ladder, goalpost…)

Creative juices flowing,  J asked if  we could have “Poetry Breakfast”, so we ended up reading poems as we modelled.  It occurred to me how different my children’s first hearing of “Macavity The Mystery Cat” was to my own, in a classroom!