2D Shapes
Polygons
Activity 1
Draw a nine-dot grid and make different shapes.
In a regular polygon, all edges and all the angles are equal.
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Activity 2
Identify the polygon and count its number of sides.
Compound shapes and tessellation
An arrangement of shapes closely fitted together, especially of polygons in a repeated pattern without gaps
or overlapping. The tiles in this pattern tessellate. This means that they join without leaving gaps.
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We can make compound shapes by joining two or more simple shapes.
Here’s a composite shape formed by a rectangle and another smaller rectangle:
And another formed by a rectangle and a triangle:
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Activity 3
Activity 4
Complete this tessellating pattern of hexagons, equilateral triangles and squares.
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Compound and Irregular shapes
Jin drew an irregular shape. It has sides of different lengths. He worked out its area.
Jin measures the area in square units. If each square is 1cm by 1cm, the units are called square centimetres.
We can write this as cm2. We can also use larger units, such as m2 and k m2.
Each square on this grid is 1cm by 1cm.
To find the area of the shape, we can count the yellow squares and use Jin’s method to join half
1 1
squares: 4 + + = 5 cm2.
2 2
Another method is to break the shape into two or more regular shapes. The shape is made up of a
square and a triangle. Together, these shapes make a compound shape.
It is more difficult to find the are of a irregular shape with curved edges. We can only estimate the
area. We count the whole squares first. Then we can count the squares that are more than half
covered as a whole square.
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Activity 5
Squares and rectangles
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Jin thinks the area of this rectangle is 20 cm2. Lets investigate.
9 cm
2 cm
To check we can draw the rectangle on a square grid. Each square on the grid is 1 cm by 1 cm. We can use
this fact to work out the area of the rectangle.
Counting all the squares in the rectangle will tell us the area.
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Activity 6
a. Use a ruler to draw each rectangle. Then work out how many centimetres squares each rectangle
covers. Write your answers in cm2.
i. Width = 5cm, length = 5cm
ii. Width = 4 cm, length = 3 cm
iii. Width = 4 cm, length = 6 cm
iv. Width = 10 cm, length = 4 cm
v. Width = 8cm, length = 3 cm
vi. Width = 2 cm. length = 12 cm.
b. Draw these shapes on a 1cm-by-1cm grid.
i. A square with an area of 49 cm2
ii. A rectangle with an area of 30 cm 2
iii. A rectangle with an area of 12cm2
Look at the two rulers. One shows centimetres and the other shows millimetres. Millimetres are very small
measurements. There are 10 mm in 1 cm.
Perimeter is the distance all the way around the outline of a shape. Perimeter is given is units of distance, for
example, centimetres or metres, the same as when you measure a straight line.
The ant walks around the perimeter of this shape in straight lines.
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10 cm + 6 cm + 10 cm + 6 cm = 32 cm.
In total the ant walks 32 cm.
Activity 7
Calculate the perimeter for the following rectangles.
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Activity 8
A. Predict the perimeter of each shape. Check by drawing each rectangle.
i. 5cm wide and 3 cm long
ii. 6 cm wide and 4cm long
iii. 7cm wide and 2 cm long
iv. 6 cm wide and 6 cm long
b. Try drawing shapes with these perimeters.
i. A rectangle with a perimeter of 30 cm
ii. A triangle with a perimeter of 30 cm
iii. A square with a perimeter of 30 cm.
Activity 9
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Activity 10
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