These four activities will help you introduce the topic of 3D surfaces to your students using experiential learning methods
1. Gold in the Coal Activity:
Purpose: This Activity will help students create something new and apply the mathematical concept of Surface Areas of 3D Surfaces.
Procedure:
– Ask students to make a batch of 5 different 3D solid Geometric Shapes using waste material that they find in the surroundings.
– Measure the dimensions of those shapes.
Using their dimensions, Calculate the Total and Curved Surface Areas.
2. Counting Squares:
Purpose: Calculating Surface Area With Hands-on Activity.
Material Required: Square printed sheet/ Graph sheet, a pair of Scissors, Glue, Cube and Cuboid.
Procedure:
– Divide the class into groups of 5s.
– Provide students with a Square printed sheet/ Graph sheet.
– Ask students to cut unit squares from the sheet and paste them on the faces of Cube and Cuboids.
– Cover the solids entirely with unit square sheets, without overlapping squares.
– Now count the number of squares on each solid shape.
– Calculate the Surface area of solid with actual measurement and calculation.
– Students will find that the Surface area of shape is equal to the number of squares.
3. Wind it Up:
Purpose: Activity to enrich Kinesthetic Skills
Materials Required: Strings, a pair of Scissors, Sphere ball.
Procedure:
– Provide the materials to students and ask them to calculate the surface areas of a spherical ball given to them using strings and scissors.
– Let learners interact with the objects in hand. In case, the learners are not able to reach the solution on their own, help them by Scaffolding (According to Vygotsky, Students are in the Zone of Proximal Development from where they can be moved ahead with the help of More knowledgeable Other by Scaffolding technique).
– Ask the students to take a string and paste its one end on the ball 
– Then simply wind the strip on the entire ball as it is wound on Spinning Tops with which they must have played in their childhood.
– Finally, unwind the string and lay it in the form of 4 circles of equal radius as sphere as shown in the sample image.
– Compare the total length of the string with the calculated surface area of the ball.
4. Who will be the Architect:
Purpose: To help students visualize and comprehend the concept of Scaling.
Activity: Let’s prepare a map of a house/ garden but with a twist!
Procedure: Prepare an outline of each room in your house including doors and windows in the designated area and also calculate further areas for each room.
