Shapes & Their Attributes

Many people spend lots of time in the kitchen—cooking, baking, eating, and, of course, cleaning up! Today, Chef Eduardo needs help identifying all of the shapes in his kitchen. He wants to use some of them as patterns for his next baking project!

What shapes do you see on Chef Eduardo’s refrigerator? Yes, there is a rectangle on the top portion of the refrigerator and a square on the bottom portion! You can tell that the top shape is a rectangle because it has 2 sets of parallel lines. Parallel lines are lines that run side by side and stay the same distance apart—they never meet. A square is a type of rectangle because it has 2 sets of parallel lines. A square has one more attribute, though: All four of its sides are equal in length.

Chef Eduardo is pleased to have spotted two different shapes he can use as patterns. However, he wants to find a few more. But first he must put a pizza in the oven so he can have it for dinner. Wow, another shape--a trapezoid! You can tell that it’s a trapezoid because it has only one set of parallel lines.

Now that the pizza is in the oven, Eduardo can relax and drink some lemonade while he waits for his pizza to bake. Oh, look, is that a triangle? Yes! It has 3 sides so it must be a triangle.

Eduardo is worried about overcooking his pizza, so he looks at the clock to check the time. Another shape! This one has no sides at all—it’s perfectly round. Well, of course--it’s a circle!

It is almost time to take the pizza out of the oven. To eat it, Eduardo will use one of his two favorite plates. Wow! Two more shapes! Chef Eduardo had forgotten that some of his plates aren’t round. One is a hexagon and the other is a pentagon. The plate on the left is a hexagon. It has 6 sides, and the first part of the word—hex—means six. The plate on the right, which has 5 sides, is a pentagon. Can you guess what penta- means? Yes, it means 5!

Let’s take a look at all of the shapes Chef Eduardo found in his kitchen! He found a rectangle, a square, a trapezoid, a triangle, a circle, a hexagon, and a pentagon!

Identifying shapes based on their attributes sure made Chef Eduardo hungry! Thank you for helping him hunt for shapes in his kitchen!