The Phantom Tollbooth- The Dodecahedron

The Dodecahedron

The Phantom Tollbooth 

by Norton Juster

I really love this book. I really can't stand how well it integrates into teaching. If you haven't read it
(you should) Milo the main character (a young boy) is bored one day when he finds a toy tollbooth has been delivered to his house. After he goes through the tollbooth, he is taken to a wild new world that functions based on rules of literacy, and mathematics.

I would like to talk about math now. I am not good at math. I admit fully to this. Consequently, I'm much better at teaching math than I would be otherwise (sometimes it takes struggle to understand struggle).

When Milo reaches the land of math the first person he meets is the Dodecahedron. This is a guy with a twelve sided dice for a head. This brings me to our first project, dealing in 3-dimensional shapes.

The Dodecahedron

Objective: Students will experiment and utilize their knowledge of 3 dimensional shapes to create a 3D model of a character. 

I like letting my kids explore how to make 3D shapes first. We checked out nets and made number cubes before hand to get ourselves warmed up. 

The project:

1. Students choose a three dimensional shape (Everyone does something different preferably.)

Examples: Cone, Cylinder, Cube, Pyramid etc. 

2. Students design their character on scratch paper (create an outline) 

3. Students create their model (it's good to have a parent or helper in classroom to help with this part)

They should first draw a net, using ruler for precise measurements. 

Note: you may want to provide students with net examples, we had ipads so students could look up nets for their shapes. 

4. Before students tape or glue shapes together they draw a face on each side of their shape. 

5. Students then create a one-dimensional body to attach to their characters "head" (their 3D shape)

6. Students present their characters and come up with a name. They can decorate them as well. 

7. While students present, other students take notes on a provided table. 

Who made it? What is it? How many sides does the shape have? etc. 

This is the dodecahedron project, I'll be doing it with my sixth graders more in depth with a volume study in a few weeks. Hopefully it will be a great example of independence on their part!