Property Chart

Age 11 to 14

Challenge Level Yellow star

Property Chart printable sheet - grid and instructions
Property Chart printable sheet - quadrilateral cards
Property Chart printable sheet - triangle cards
Printable spotty paper - square grid, isometric grid

Shuffle eight of the quadrilateral cards, and lay them on the grid in the spaces marked "property card". Your challenge is to draw a quadrilateral in each square, so that the quadrilateral has both the properties at the top of the column and at the start of the row. There might be some that aren't possible! If you like, you could play this with a friend, taking turns to draw shapes. If you can't draw a shape, pass and see whether your partner can, the winner is the one who draws the last shape.

You might find it helpful to draw the shapes on spotty paper; there are squares here and isometric paper here (this might help you find areas and angles).

You could play the game using triangle cards instead.

Now you've had a go at the challenge, here are some questions you could think about. Use the quadrilateral cards for these.

Can you select 8 cards and arrange them so that you can fill in all of the squares? What cards did you use? What about none of the squares?

What's the smallest number of different shapes you need to fill in the grid? What shapes are these, and what cards did you use?

This problem is based on the game Nine Pin Shape Draw from "Geometry Games", a photocopiable resource produced by Gillian Hatch and available from the Association of Teachers of Mathematics

Number and algebra

Geometry and measure

Probability and statistics

Working mathematically

Advanced mathematics

For younger learners

Property Chart

You may also like

Linkage

Making Rectangles, Making Squares

The Cyclic Quadrilateral