Five pages about lines of symmetry in polygons, from yes-or-no to drawing your own. Page 1 shows twelve polygons, each with one dashed line, and students circle Yes or No: is it a line of symmetry? It includes the lines that fool people, like a rectangle's diagonal and a parallelogram's diagonal. On page 2 students draw one line of symmetry on each of twelve shapes, from an isosceles triangle to an arrow and a crown. Page 3 asks for every line of symmetry and how many there are, for a square, a rectangle, three kinds of triangles, a kite, a rhombus, a parallelogram, a trapezoid and regular polygons up to the octagon. Page 4 gives half of a polygon on a square grid and students draw the other half, across a line that goes up and down, across, and on a slant. Page 5 sorts twelve numbered polygons into 0, 1, 2 or more than 2 lines, compares a square with a rectangle, and has students draw polygons with exactly 1 and exactly 2 lines of symmetry.
Before page 1, cut a paper rectangle and fold it along a diagonal: the corners stick out, so the diagonal is not a line of symmetry. Fold it in half the long way and the short way to find its two real lines. Give each pair of students a paper square, an equilateral triangle and a parallelogram to fold before page 3, and a small mirror to stand on the dashed lines of page 4.
Look for lines of symmetry around the house: a window, a door, a stop sign, a kite, a slice of bread. Fold paper napkins and see how many ways each shape folds into matching halves. Cut a shape out of folded paper and open it to see the line of symmetry along the fold.
This pack supports the following Common Core State Standards for Mathematics:
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A 5-page lines of symmetry pack for 3rd grade. Decide whether a dashed line is a line of symmetry, draw one line of symmetry on each polygon, then draw all of them and write how many (a square has 4, a rectangle 2, a parallelogram none). Finish polygons on a square grid so the dashed line is a line of symmetry, sort polygons by their number of lines, and draw polygons with exactly 1 and exactly 2 lines. Every page comes in color and in black and white. Answer keys included.
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