Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland by Cindy Neuschwander

I waited until Saturday to post this week’s Fabulous Fiction Friday post not because I forgot, but because I wanted to tell you about a book that is not related to art. Gasp.

But since we were talking about angles yesterday, I thought the story of a knight who uses angles to complete a quest would be a great choice for this week’s book.

Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland, written by Cindy Neuschwander and illustrated by Wayne Geehan, is the story of Radius and his quest to find his neighbor, King Lell. Armed with only a circular medallion (a compass), Radius travels through a cute little town full of houses whose roofs connect at small angles. He then makes his way through the mountains of Obtuse. Finally, he must solve a series of angle-related challenges to make his way through the castle to rescue King Lell.

This book is full of math puns (which I love), and even includes two dragons that belong to King Lell (the “pair of Lell’s”).

This is a fun story and a great introduction to angles.

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Art Angles

I've been working on a lesson plan for one of my classes and I thought you might be interested in some of the materials I've been preparing. The lesson is meant to teach 3rd graders to indentify right angles, acute angles, and obtuse angles. One of the activities I've been readying is a set of note cards with pictures on them. In the pictures, I've traced some of the angles and numbered them. The students are to tell whether each angle is right, acute, or obtuse. They are then to label each angle ABC. My note cards will be laminated so the students can label them and then erase them. This means I'll be able to reuse them.

Some of my images are photographs of objects like trees, fenses, and planes. Some, of course, are pictures of artwork. The artwork is below. If you want to use the images, copy them into a word document and resize them so they fit on note cards.

In order: 1. John James Audubon's Flamingo, 2. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Girls at the Piano, 3. Henri Matisse's Jazz, 4. a Greco-Roman bronze sculpture called Boy with Thorn, 5. Gustave Courbet's Cliffs Near Etretat, 6. an Egyptian sculpture of Akhenaten, 7. Andre Derain's The Turning Road, 8. and a color field painting by Piet Mondrian.

Enjoy!

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