Story: For the third time, Harold found himself falling to the ground. He quickly tried to draw a curve to catch his fall. The first time he fell on a curve, it turned out to be an elephant. The second time, it ended up being a lion!

Now Harold has stumbled upon another curve to help cushion his fall. Grab a sheet and use your imagination to draw the rest of the picture. Then use Pattern Blocks and Cuisenaire Rods to build what you've created.

Inspired by Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson; HarperCollins, 1998

Suggested manipulatives: Multilinks (preferred), Unifix cubes, centimeter cubes, Cuisenaire rods

Prep time: 10-15 minutes, as you will need to create some curved template designs for kids to use when beginning their projects.

Classroom time: Asking children to “do their best work” for each Math Vitamin assumes that some children will need a longer time than others. Ideally you want to offer a block of time for Math Vitamin projects and have another task available (writing, free exploration etc.) for those students who finish work prior to their peers. For this project allow 20-45 minutes for students to work through all the steps.

How to individualize/stretch: For some children, learning how to use triangle shapes with straight shapes to make a curve is the initial learning. For those ready for more, how do they make a shape have more of a curve? What happens when you put a triangle next to another triangle? Further extensions include having students create their project design and then assess a value based on a common value for the blocks instead of drafting an equation based on the overall number of blocks used.