Making Lines

Activity Overview

This activity tackles vocabulary acquisition and gross motor skill-building while introducing new mathematical topics with our youngest learners. Students are introduced to new math vocabulary and will actually experience what the words mean. This may be the first time students hear terms like “diagonal,” “horizontal,” and “vertical,” but they will be able to utilize the gross motor skills that have been developing this year to reinforce this new vocabulary. Math activities like this one focus on the building blocks of more complicated math concepts down the road. As students grow this basic work with patterns and identifying attributes will play a key role in more complicated math concepts like graphing, creating patterns, and identifying sorting.

What You Need

• Sidewalk chalk and some pavement outdoors (or painter’s tape and a space to work indoors)

• A variety of toys, such as animal figurines, stuffed animals, transportation toys, play produce, blocks, or connecting cubes

• Gathered natural materials, such as leaves, acorns, birdseed, berries, or flowers

Steps

1. Draw a variety of long lines on the ground outside using sidewalk chalk, or make the lines indoors on the floor using painter’s tape. Include the following types of lines:

   • Vertical line

   • Horizontal line

   • Diagonal line

   • Curvy line

   • Zig zag line

2. Discuss the direction and shape of the lines with your student, being sure to name the different lines.

3. Guide your student to trace the lines using a variety of mediums:

   • Walk along the lines

   • Line up toys – such as animal figurines, stuffed animals, transportation toys, play produce, blocks, or connecting cubes – on the lines.

   • Gather some natural materials outside, such as leaves, acorns, birdseed, berries, or flowers. Line them up on the lines, and when finished feel free to leave the found materials as treats for animals outside!

Guiding Questions

• What do you notice about this line?

• Does this line go up? Down? Side-to-side?

• Is this line straight? Curvy? Zig zag?

Extensions

• Count how many toys you used to cover each line. What do you notice about the numbers for each toy? For each line?

• Explore making patterns on the lines using toys or natural materials. For example: Line up a truck, then a car, then a truck, then a car. Reference Produce Patterns for ideas of different types of patterns.

• Explore making shapes using toys or natural materials. For example: Arrange the gathered acorns into the shape of a circle.