Shape Hunters on the Loose!

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 Welcome back!

Today, I feel like it is a good day for giving you one different idea to implement in your classes of geometry. Well, prepare yourself because from now on, you're about to start seeing shapes everywhere. Because geometry isn’t just something stuck in a textbook — it’s hiding in plain sight all around us! As Van Hiele (1986) emphasized, the first level of geometric thinking is based on visual recognition of shapes in real-world contexts.

Mission: Become a Shape Hunter

This activity that today I am presenting to you, is based in the idea of becoming a hunter, a shape hunter. For it, you need to grab your imaginary magnifying glass (or real phone camera) and take your students on a Shape Hunt Adventure! The goal? Spot and capture as many geometric figures as possible — in the wild world of your school, home or neighborhood.

Here are some things to find as an example:

  •  Squares in windows and floor tiles

  •  Octagons in street signs

  •  Triangles in roof structures and bridges

  •  Circles in wheels, clocks, and plates

  • Rectangles in doors, notebooks, and screens

Challenge idea: To make their search worth, you can make a photo collage of their finds and create a virtual "Geometry Museum" in your classroom with the help of everyone to keep that memory alive.

Tool: Google Earth + Geometry

Want to go further? Want to take the hunt global? For it, you can use Google Earth to explore how cities and landmarks are full of shapes:

  • The Eiffel Tower = triangles galore.

  • The Pentagon.

  • Crop circles = mysterious circular geometry in nature!


App: Shapes on the Go

Moreover, there is one app in particular that I think that could be very useful for the process and that could help in the learning process is the following one: 

Seek by iNaturalist. thanks to it, you can let kids photograph nature and see which shapes appear in leaves, shells, insects, and more! According to Bylik et al (2020), Seek is like having a mini-biologist in your pocket. It’s a super intuitive app that turns any walk in the park into a scientific adventure. Just open your camera, point it at a plant, insect, or animal… and boom! The app tells you what you’re looking at.

The best part? No need to create an account or share personal info — making it perfect for classroom use with younger students. Plus, it offers fun challenges, badges, and rewards that turn nature observation into an exciting learning quest.

It’s a brilliant way to connect science, geometry and a love for the natural world.

Why This Matters

By making geometry tangible, kids start to feel math, not just memorize it. According to Boaler (2016), mathematics becomes more powerful and accessible when learners experience it as a tool for understanding and navigating the world around them. When a child sees a rectangle and thinks “window” or spots a circle and says “that is the pizza shape”, they begin to understand geometry as a language of the real world.

It is not just shapes… it is math with meaning.


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REFERENCES:

Boaler, J. (2016). Mathematical mindsets: Unleashing students' potential through creative math, inspiring messages and innovative teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Bilyk, Z. I., Shapovalov, Y. B., Shapovalov, V. B., Megalinska, A. P., Andruszkiewicz, F., y Dołhańczuk-Śródka, A. (2020, November). Assessment of mobile phone applications feasibility on plant recognition: comparison with Google Lens AR-app. CEUR Workshop Proceedings.

Google LLC. (2023). Google Earth (Version 9.175.0.1) [Computer software]. Google earth. https://earth.google.com

Seek. (2023). iNaturalist (Version 2.14.1) [Mobile app]. iNaturalist. https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app

Van Hiele, P. M. (1986). Structure and insight: A theory of mathematics education. Academic Press.


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