Five

OBSERVING FIVE WITH YOUNG CHILDREN

Observing five includes exploring geometric expressions of five, i.e., pentagons, pentagrams; polyhedrons such as a
pentagonal pyramid, a pentagonal prism, a dodecahedron; and a spiral. *

INTRODUCTORY ACTIVITIES

Have a table with natural and other characteristic objects for children to look at and gently touch. Make a ceremony of the placement of any new object or its picture to help create interest (e.g., sand dollar, starfish, carambola or star fruit, pinecone, sunflower head).
“What do you know about five?” (e.g., five toes on each foot, five fingers on each hand, five senses)
Play “I Spy with My Little Eye,” finding pentagons, stars, and spirals throughout the room.
Challenge children to make pentagons and stars with their bodies.
Have five children sit in chairs placed at the vertices of a pentagon shape and help them hold a length of yarn to delineate the shape. Invite other children to lie down on the floor under the pentagon and look up at it.

LIFE SKILLS

Sort a collection of pentagons according to size or color.
Thread five beads (light blue) onto a pipe cleaner or length of string and fashion into jewelry.
Stitch around edges of pentagonal cards.
Cut along a spiral or pentagonal path.
Wash a conch shell; draw attention to spiral.
Present flower arranging; draw attention to star shape that you see in many flowers.
Cut an apple to reveal a star shape.

SENSORIAL EXPLORATION

Hang a mobile with pentagons and/or stars from the ceiling.
Invite finger-tracing of various pentagonal and pentagram shapes.
Place tape to create a pentagon on floor; invite children to various exercises (e.g., walking, sitting). Consider average length of children’s legs so that five can sit here and reform the shape with their legs.
Draw pentagons in a tray of sand or shaving cream.
“Draw” pentagons with your finger in the palm of child’s hand or on his back.
Feel sandpaper pentagon and sandpaper numeral five; make crayon rubbings of the same.
Hold pentagonal pyramids and pentagonal prisms of various sizes, one at a time, in two hands. (Patterns are available for making various polyhedrons from paper or card stock.)
Build spirals with small items (e.g., rocks, shells, beads).
Talk about our five senses.
Explore bubble-making with various open-form polyhedrons: a pentagonal pyramid, a pentagonal prism, and a dodecahedron.
Explore patterning properties of pentagons.
Push or pull a five-pound weight in a box or wagon.

MATH

Explore a basket containing five of various items (e.g., five beads, five pencils, five apples).
Name items that the child can find and bring to you on a tray (“Please bring me five…”).
Display currency units of choice (e.g., five dollars, five euros, five yen, five pesos).
Count various objects in room by fives. (Counting and skip counting songs are available.)
Display and work with units of measure (e.g., five ounces, five pounds, five inches, five feet, five meters, five minutes, five hours).

LANGUAGE

Read aloud picture books that harmonize with the number five theme (e.g., A Star in My Orange by Dana Meachen Rau; My Five Senses by Margaret Miller; The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop; It’s Hard to Be Five: Learning How to Work My Control Panel by Jamie Lee Curtis; Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed by Eileen Christelow).
Invite child to the nature table and engage child in conversation about the objects on display; have child write about the objects (teacher may write child’s words); invite child to “read” his story to his friends.
Trace within pentagonal stencils, around pentagonal forms, and along a spiral path (pre-writing skill).
Trace printed, broken-line pentagons off or on writing lines (pre-writing skill); extend into connect-the-five-dots activities.
Pin-punch paper pentagons (pre-writing skill).
Provide materials for children to make little books about five. Include pictures (e.g., a cake with five candles, a fish tank with five fish).
Explore sign language for five and pentagon.
Add relevant words to Word Wall (e.g., five, fifth, pentagon); Greek and Latin prefixes (e.g., penta—as in pentagon, quint—as in quintet); include related pictures of natural and man-made constructs.
Add to three-part card activities (e.g., pentagon).
Explore phrases (e.g., “Give me five!”)

CULTURE

Spotlight the words for five as you learn to count together, one to ten, in other languages.
Look for expressions of five on a variety of flags (e.g., US, European, Chinese, Olympic Games flag).
Share expressions of five elsewhere in various cultures.

History and Timelines

Add to the linear display of calendar months; guide understanding of five months.
Add to the linear display of photographs of a child; add one from his or her fifth birthday—continuing concept of a lifetime.
Read stories about applicable history related to subject shown on currency (e.g., Abe Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson in conjunction with display of a five-dollar bill and a nickel).
Refer to a linear timeline of the ages and find the early civilizations of Egypt, the Americas, and Islam; explore work of the ancient craftsmen who used geometry extensively, both structurally and symbolically; focus on five and the geometric expressions of five.

Art and Music

Invite child to the nature table and engage child in conversation about the objects on display; have child draw/map the objects to create a still life.
Print pentagonal shapes using various items.
Paste pentagonal shapes.
Stencil pentagonal shapes.
Explore what can be created with pentagonal shapes.
Cut or pin-punch pentagonal shapes; cut spirals and hang from ceiling.
Explore patterning properties of pentagons.
Provide coloring sheets with pentagonal patterns.
Marble-roll paint onto paper in pentagonal pan or box.
Look for pentagons within selected pieces of art (e.g., mask of Tutankhamun).
Spread glue in a spiral and let child sprinkle with glitter.
Look for spirals in inked thumbprints on drawing paper before creating thumbprint “pictures.”
Sing and dance (e.g., “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” “Five Little Speckled Frogs,” “Five Little Ducks,” “Yellow Is the Sun,” add fifth verse to “The Ants Go Marching”).
Introduce a performance by five instrumentalists or singers as a quintet.

Science

Look at The Periodic Table of Elements; five is the atomic number of boron.
Show a spiraling vortex with two two-liter bottles of water and special attachment.

Astronomy

Show pictures of our spiral galaxy as well as the other types.

Botany/Zoology/Human Body

Count five fingers on each hand; count five toes on each foot.
Show the paw prints of animals that reveal five pads on each foot; extend into animal identification.
Show samples of the many flowers with five petals (e.g., hollyhock, sweet pea, wild rose blossoms).
Show that white-pine needles are grouped in clusters of five.
Look at the spiral shapes within a young fern frond, a curl of hair, a pig’s tail, and our own fingerprints.
Name and sort the five groups of vertebrates, i.e., mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish.
Study five basic food groups.
Talk about our five senses.

ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

Have children find an expression of five outside (e.g., rocks, flowers).
Invite five children to sit on the patio and roll a ball to each other; talk about the shape expressed, i.e., a pentagon.
Have child lie down with legs and arms out; have him hold on to one end of a length of yarn. Stretch the yarn across his chest to his other hand, stretch the yarn down and around his opposite foot then up atop his head and then down and around other foot and back to his hand holding the beginning of the yarn. Have other children view star from above.
Before they begin snow angels in the snow, have children see their snow stars in the snow.

* “At first, the spiral doesn’t appear to be pentagonal, but wherever you see a star you will find a spiral rolled within it.” Michael S. Schneider, A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe. (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1994), 139.