Make Flat Shapes
Drop, drag, and customize colorful 2D shapes while exploring perimeter and area.
- Geometry
- Medium
- 8 min
- 8-12
How to Play
How to Play
- Open the palette and click any icon to drop a shape onto the stage. Shapes arrive centered and can be dragged, rotated, recolored, or deleted with the inspector tools or keyboard shortcuts.
- Use the numeric fields to change side lengths, angles, radii, or side counts. The stage updates instantly so the geometry matches the measurements.
- Read the perimeter and area values at the bottom of the inspector. Encourage learners to predict these values before changing parameters.
- Experiment with the compact color grid to group shapes by attribute (all parallelograms in green, polygons with equal sides in violet, etc.).
Knowledge Background
This sandbox reinforces core geometry concepts: congruent sides, interior angles, similarity, and the formulas behind area and perimeter. By adjusting parameters, students see how a triangle’s area depends on its included angle, why trapezoid legs change when bases move, or how regular polygons approximate circles as the side count grows. The app also introduces coordinate thinking—shapes occupy positions on the plane, respond to translations and rotations, and demonstrate how scaling affects every measurement.
Why It Helps Kids
- Concrete visuals: Links abstract formulas to manipulable diagrams so learners grasp the “why” behind rules.
- Math communication: Students explain what changed, justify strategies, and compare multiple designs.
- Spatial reasoning: Dragging, rotating, and aligning shapes builds intuition for symmetry and transformations.
- Creativity & agency: Kids design their own figures, floor plans, or tessellations, nurturing ownership of the math.
Extended Activities
- Challenge learners to build composite figures and calculate the total area/perimeter, explaining how they decomposed the shape.
- Recreate real-world objects (kites, tabletops, road signs) and discuss which properties make them sturdy or efficient.
- Pair with measurement tools (rulers, protractors) so learners can verify digital dimensions with physical ones.
- Integrate coding concepts by asking students to describe the sequence of transformations needed to build a design.