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For younger learners

  • Early Years Foundation Stage

Being Resourceful - Geometry

Marbles in a Box

Age 11 to 16
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow star

How many winning lines can you make in a three-dimensional version of noughts and crosses?

Triangles to Tetrahedra

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow starYellow star

Imagine you have an unlimited number of four types of triangle. How many different tetrahedra can you make?

Shady Symmetry

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow star

How many different symmetrical shapes can you make by shading triangles or squares?

Hexy-metry

Age 14 to 16
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow starYellow star

A hexagon, with sides alternately a and b units in length, is inscribed in a circle. How big is the radius of the circle?

The Spider and the Fly

Age 14 to 16
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow star

A spider is sitting in the middle of one of the smallest walls in a room and a fly is resting beside the window. What is the shortest distance the spider would have to crawl to catch the fly?

Cuboids

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow starYellow star

Can you find a cuboid that has a surface area of exactly 100 square units. Is there more than one? Can you find them all?

On the Edge

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow star

If you move the tiles around, can you make squares with different coloured edges?

Square It

Age 11 to 16
Challenge Level Yellow star

Players take it in turns to choose a dot on the grid. The winner is the first to have four dots that can be joined to form a square.

Isosceles Triangles

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow star

Draw some isosceles triangles with an area of $9$cm$^2$ and a vertex at (20,20). If all the vertices must have whole number coordinates, how many is it possible to draw?

Quadrilaterals Game

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow star

A game for 2 or more people, based on the traditional card game Rummy.

Shapely Pairs

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow star

A game in which players take it in turns to turn up two cards. If they can draw a triangle which satisfies both properties they win the pair of cards. And a few challenging questions to follow...

Property Chart

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow star

A game in which players take it in turns to try to draw quadrilaterals (or triangles) with particular properties. Is it possible to fill the game grid?

Semi-regular Tessellations

Age 11 to 16
Challenge Level Yellow star

Semi-regular tessellations combine two or more different regular polygons to fill the plane. Can you find all the semi-regular tessellations?

Transformation Game

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow star

Why not challenge a friend to play this transformation game?

Which Solids Can We Make?

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow starYellow starYellow star

Interior angles can help us to work out which polygons will tessellate. Can we use similar ideas to predict which polygons combine to create semi-regular solids?

Constructing Triangles

Age 11 to 14
Challenge Level Yellow star

Generate three random numbers to determine the side lengths of a triangle. What triangles can you draw?

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The NRICH Project aims to enrich the mathematical experiences of all learners. To support this aim, members of the NRICH team work in a wide range of capacities, including providing professional development for teachers wishing to embed rich mathematical tasks into everyday classroom practice.

NRICH is part of the family of activities in the Millennium Mathematics Project.

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