Fishing for Quadrilaterals

My students are currently learning about quadrilaterals in Math. I don't know about you but it can be hard to keep all of them straight: rhombus, trapezoid, parallelogram. So I decided to make it fun. After we spent one math lesson introducing them, we went fishing. And I decided to share it since I'm sure I'm not the only teacher who's trying to make quadrilaterals fun.

You'll need a dowel for each child (I used 12 inch one), yarn, magnets, paperclips and cutouts of a variety of quadrilaterals. I printed and laminated sheets of quadrilaterals. Just do a search and you'll find a lot of them. I like the colored ones because I think they're more fun. Then I cut them out and put a paper clip on each one. For the fishing rods I let my pipsqueaks decorate them. Then I tied a length of yarn to one end and attached a magnet to the end of the yarn.

Of course there are several ways to play this game, but here's the way I did it. I would give the name of a quadrilateral or a clue for a quadrilateral (e.g. all four sides are the same length) and my students would have to 'fish' for that quadrilateral. Anything else gets thrown back.

There was a lot of giggling, a few unfounded claims of 'you're cheating' but most importantly, they were using the correct names for the shapes and recognizing which shape they were supposed to be 'fishing' for. They had fun. They were learning. In my books, that's a win!