DLTK's Educational Activities
Tommy Triangle Shapes Buddy

Tommy Triangle is an easy paper craft to help young children learn about triangles.  See if you can count how many triangles there are in the craft.

For some reason we had fun trying to figure out who Tommy looked like.  Tasha thought he looked like the Sheriff of Nottingham (this was likely influenced by the existence of Squire Square), Darren thought he looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the Sheriff of Nottingham and I thought he looked like my second year economics professor (I'm so unimaginative!)...

Materials:

• paper,
• scissors,
• printer,
• glue,
• OPTIONAL:
  • something to color with (crayons, paint, markers, etc)

Instructions:

• print template of choice.
• cut out the template pieces.  This may require adult assistance.  If you have a beginning user of scissors, let them cut out the easy (large) pieces (like the head, arms and body) while you cut out the harder ones (mouth, eyes, hair, belt and feet).
• glue the pieces together. 
  • Glue the face and hair onto the medium sized equilateral triangle (head).
  • Glue the head and arms onto the large equilateral triangle (upper body)
  • Glue the small equilateral triangle (tummy) onto the upper body.
  • Glue the belt and legs onto the tummy.
  • If you get stuck, use the small image at the top of this page to give you an idea of how it goes together.
  • If you are working with a large group of children, you may wish to pre-make an example Tommy Triangle to display during craft time.
• use the legs and feet (scalene, right triangles) to launch a brief discussion about the different types of triangles:
  • equilateral triangles (most of the triangles in the craft) -- all sides are equal
  • isosceles triangles -- two sides are equal
  • scalene triangles (the legs and feet) -- no sides are equal
  • right triangle -- either an isosceles or scalene triangle with a 90 degree angle (right angle) in it (if you cut a rectangle or square in half diagonally you get two right triangles)

Templates:

• Close the template window after printing to return to this screen.
• Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP or FILE, PRINTER SETUP in most browsers).

Template 1:  Head, Face, Legs, Hair and Belt
color   or   B&W

Template 2:  Body and Arms
color   or   B&W