Making Math with Dough: Weekly Science Activity

In this week's spotlight: a math activity that turns playing with dough into an exploration of geometry. If you make a cube out of dough, you can measure the sides of the 3D object and multiple the length by width by height to find out the volume of the shape. If you gently and uniformly flatten (or squish) the object, you transform your original shape into a new shape with new dimensions. Does the volume change? In this family-friendly math activity, kids can have geometry fun with either store-bought or homemade dough. Make some shapes, take some measurements, transform the shapes into new ones, measure again, and then spend time talking about what happens to the dimensions—and to the volume—of the shapes that are all made from the same starting piece of dough!

• Play-Doh Math (full Science Buddies project idea)
• Shape Science: Play-Doh Math (science activity at Scientific American)