Shapes of Boxes

A box is opened out into a net, and children judge whether folding it back up would make a box. From Identifying Nets they move to Opposite Faces and then How to Fold, learning to move the connections between faces around in their heads.

Opposite Faces gets confused with faces that sit next to each other on the net. In a row of four faces, the pair that face each other are the two with one face between them. Children also assume that any six faces will fold up, and choose nets whose faces would overlap.

The experience of viewing an object from different angles, the shape seen from the front and the shape seen from above in Types of Shapes, is applied here to building a solid up from a flat net. Working out which face lands against which continues into Rectangular Prisms and Cubes in grade 4, where perpendicular and parallel edges and faces become formal terms.