I am spending the summer in a major overhaul on the house, attic and basement. I am finding any lost pieces and re-filing all my paperwork…why? Not because I am a glutton for punishment, but because I need to get my head and heart ready for the new school year game.
I came across this list of sizes for the trinomial and binomial cube…and thought I would share. I did this a few years ago and I am missing a few pieces so I need to find a good source of cm blocks in bulk again…anyone??…besides I want to make the painted and unpainted versions!
OK…measurements…the Trinomial is made up of 3 cubes and 7 sizes of prisms(but more than one of each size as follows:
Cubes of Trinomial:
4x4x4
3x3x3
2x2x2
Prisms of Trinomial:
(3) 4x4x3
(3) 4x3x3
(6) 4x3x2
(3) 3x3x2
(3) 4x2x2
(3) 3x2x2
All of the 4×4 faces are red.
All oif the 3×3 faces are blue.
All of the 2×2 faces are red.
All non-square faces are black.
Cubes of Binomial :
4x4x4
3x3x3
Prisms of Binomial:
(3) 4x4x3
(3) 3x3x4
All 4×4 faces are red.
All 3×3 faces are blue.
All 3×4 faces are
black.
When we made ours a few years ago, I used wood cm blocks and joined them together with wood glue. I just made the Trinomial Cube the first time as the cubes and prisms of the Binomial are the same…They aren’t 100% square, but we did not mind. (in truth, they looked pretty darn good IMHO 😉
We also did not paint ours…I was intending to make another set that I would paint (after coating it with a bit of wood filler)…the kids enjoyed seeing and feeling how many cm blocks made up each cube or prism. At the time, I did not even make up the cards for the cubes either…this time I am. I hope this helps someone!
Cards and equations for Binomial and Trinomial cube
Lessons:
Thank you!
I’m just starting to make a pile of maths materials (I am jumping about a bit), today I got the wood for the red rods/number rods, and the brown stair and pink tower. I have been figuring that the numbers for the binomial and trinomial cubes must be ‘out there’, but didn’t bother to look _yet_ because I’m not ready… I was looking for something else and your blog was linked—with exactly what I was hoping to find later:-)
Now to make a note where I will be able to find it when I need it:-)
Lovely and Thank you for sharing. I was planing to make these two and still thinking how to get the wood. Never think of using cubes. Great idea!
Hi! Thank you so much for linking to my Binomial & Trinomial cards. Just wanted to mention that the link to those items has changed; you can find it here now:
Word Problems and Equations.
If you have a chance to update your post, I’d be most grateful!
Thanks,
Lori
[…] Montessori Binomial Cube and Trinomial Cube with A Garden of Roses and […]
For anyone else looking at this the totals are
Binomial: 343
Trinomial: 633 (343 from binomial + 290)
Both: 976
Seems like something is missing…
I was calculating the total number of centimeter cubes that would be needed to build a trinomial cube, and I was puzzled that the total number according to the dimensions given here don’t make a cubic number. (the total was 633, should have been 729 or 9 cubed) On Sue Chen’s website (http://faculty.fullerton.edu/syen/mts/sensor/7.htm) it looks like the total number of blocks should be 27, so 3 were missing from the list given here. I think the dimensions of the missing blocks are three 4 x 4 x 2 blocks.
Thanks so much for posting this information! So helpful!