A fun and engaging explanation of diamond shapes and how they relate to stretched squares, designed for young children.
A diamond shape is a special type of shape that looks like a square but is tilted. If you were to take a square and turn it so that one of its corners is pointed up, it looks like a diamond! Diamonds are also called rhombuses.
Now, let’s think about a square. A square has four equal sides and four corners that are all right angles (which means they look like the corners of a book).
When we stretch a square, it means we make it longer in one direction while keeping the other direction the same. Imagine if you pull the top and bottom of a square away from the middle. What happens? Yes! It becomes a rectangle!
When we talk about a diamond shape being a stretched square, we can think about how the diamond might be like a square that has been squished or stretched in a different way. If you stretch a square evenly, it would turn into a rectangle. If you only stretch it in a diagonal way (along the corners), it transforms into a diamond shape!
Why not try this with paper? Take a piece of paper and draw a square. Then, try to stretch it by pulling on opposite corners or squishing opposite sides and see how the shape changes! You can create your very own diamonds!
A diamond shape can be thought of as a square that has been tilted, and by stretching a square in different ways, you can create shapes like rectangles and diamonds. It’s all about how we pull and twist shapes!