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Clean Up, Up, Up!

Circle! Sphere!
by Grace Lin
Join three friends for some bubble blowing fun as they make bubbles using circular, triangular, and heart-shaped wands.
Resources for Circle! Sphere!:
Discovering the Math: Book Guide (English)
Discovering the Math: Book Guide (Español)
*Spanish versions coming soon!
Activities for Circle! Sphere!:
Bubble Solution Recipe (English)
Bubble Frames (English)
Find That Shape (English)
Shapes on the Wall (English)
Bubble Snakes (English)
Can you blow a heart-shaped bubble with a heart-shaped wand?
Topics: shapes, patterns, cause and effect, spatial awareness, science
Activities To Do Together:
Use the book Circle! Sphere! to explore the shapes of everyday objects.
While reading the book Circle! Sphere! try the following:
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Notice the different shapes of the wands and the shape of the bubble each wand makes. What do you notice?
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Count what you see in the story. Wands, bubbles, children.
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Compare the size of the bubbles on the book cover or last page of the story.
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Talk about how spheres and circles are different.
When you have finished reading the story try the following:
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Blow bubbles for your child to look at and reach. This is great practice for tracking moving objects and also supports eye-hand coordination.
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Look for circles and spheres around you. Marbles, oranges, and tennis balls are examples of spheres that may be familiar to your child.
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Blow bubbles and describe where they are with positional words like “up,” “down,” “under,” and “over.”
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Make bubble wands of different shapes with wire. Use them to blow bubbles. See if you can make a wand that produces a bubble that isn’t a sphere
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Blow bubbles and play “Simon Says” with both a bubble popping and positional word twist. Ask your child to pop a bubble only when they hear a direction preceded by the words “Simon says.” For example, your child would pop a bubble when they hear “Simon says pop a bubble near your face,” but do nothing when they hear the direction “Pop a bubble beside your shoe.”
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Explore how spheres (balls) and cubes/rectangular prisms (boxes) move. Try stacking and rolling these shapes. What differences do you notice?
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Please check out the Book Guide for Circle! Sphere! for more!
Online External Resources for Circle! Sphere!:
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Coming soon!