Toy Joy Class 3 Maths Chapter 2 CBSE Notes 2025-26

Shapes are all around us, and understanding them makes Maths fun and practical for everyday life. In this chapter, children learn about different three-dimensional shapes such as cubes, cuboids, cylinders, cones, and spheres. These shapes can be found in things we use daily, like boxes, bottles, and cans. 

Through activities such as crafting and observation, students discover the features of these shapes, like faces, edges, and corners, and identify real-life objects based on these properties.

Craft with Shapes One engaging activity is creating art with old boxes and bottles. Children use cubes, cuboids, and cylinders to make interesting animals and faces. Examples include drawing a bird face on a cone to showcase its pointed beak, a puppy on a cylinder with wide ears, a pig on a cube with narrow eyes, and a cat on a cuboid with long whiskers. This approach helps students relate shapes to familiar things, making learning more interactive.

Recognising Different Shapes Students are encouraged to count and identify how many of each shape they use during these crafts. For instance, while making Jaya's Rocket, children must note the number of cubes, cuboids, cones, and cylinders used in the model. They also answer questions such as what shape lies between certain blocks or which shape sits on top or bottom.

Understanding Features: Face, Corner, and Edge Every three-dimensional shape has unique features. A face is the flat or curved surface, a corner is a point where edges meet, and an edge is the line where two faces meet. For example, a cube has 6 faces, 12 edges, and 8 corners. Recognising these features helps students describe and distinguish between different shapes.

Building a House with Shapes To deepen understanding, students build houses using various objects collected from around them. They talk about the arrangement of these shapes and discuss the types of faces and edges—whether they are straight (like in cubes and cuboids) or curved (like in cylinders and cones). For example, a bottle can form the main part of a house (cylinder), and a box can make the roof (cuboid or cube).

Activities: Houses, Towers, and More Jaya made creative houses by combining different shapes. Students are encouraged to use their imagination and available objects to construct towers, rockets, or other models. This not only improves their understanding of shapes but also builds creativity and spatial skills.

Toy Shop: Exploring Composite Shapes In the toy shop activity, students observe that toys are often made up of several shapes. For example, Devika’s toy engine includes red cylinders (wheels or connecting rods), yellow cones (funnels), grey cuboids (body parts), and blue cubes (occupying corners or ends). Through counting and identifying shapes, children understand that a cube is a special type of cuboid with all faces equal, while cuboids have rectangular faces.

• Cube: All faces are squares, all sides are equal.
• Cuboid: Faces are rectangles, sides can be different lengths.
• Cylinder: Two circular faces and one curved face.
• Cone: One circular face and one curved, pointed face.
• Sphere: Only one curved face, no edges or corners.

Construct and Describe: Group Work Children work in small groups to select, combine, and describe shapes to their peers. For instance, one might arrange a cylinder on top of a cuboid and then place a cone above the cylinder. Others listen to the description and attempt to recreate the arrangement without directly seeing it. This develops verbal description skills and helps visualise complex models using basic shapes.

Survey in the Classroom: Spotting Shapes A classroom survey encourages students to look for cubes, cuboids, cones, cylinders, and spheres in their surroundings. Students fill tables with real examples, like water bottles (cylinder), dice (cube), erasers (cuboid), birthday hats (cone), and balls (sphere). They also identify which shapes are found most and least often and note objects made using more than one shape, like a pencil box (cuboid and cylinder parts).

As part of this activity, students also practise marking the different shapes: circling cubes, ticking cones, crossing out cylinders, and drawing boxes around cuboids. This encourages careful observation and differentiation.

Understanding Shape Properties Students answer questions based on the properties of shapes, such as:

• The shape with no edges: Sphere
• The shape with only flat faces: Cube, Cuboid
• The shape with only curved faces: Sphere
• The shape with both straight and curved edges: Cylinder, Cone
• The shape with both flat and curved faces: Cylinder, Cone

With clay and sticks, children are encouraged to make these different shapes, enhancing their understanding through hands-on practice. They try joining small cubes to make new shapes and explore how combinations form cuboids, towers, or any shape they imagine.

Let Us Play: Dice Game A border game with dice adds learning and fun. Rolling a die, students move counters over pictures representing different shapes (cylinder, sphere, cone, cube, cuboid). This reinforces shape recognition and counting skills.

Exploring Models and Patterns Children investigate building models in different orders and checking the arrangement of faces on a die (for example, the number opposite 1 is 6, opposite 2 is 5, and opposite 3 is 4). They discuss patterns, similarities, and differences between shapes, and try joining 3 cubes in many ways to form new configurations.

Finally, students use several dice to make cuboids, towers, or even their favourite objects, learning how shapes fit together in practical constructions. By describing how parts are arranged, children link mathematical ideas to real-world problem-solving and creative design.

Class 3 Maths Chapter 2 Notes – Maths Mela: Shapes Activities Revision

These revision notes for CBSE Class 3 Maths Chapter 2 cover the most important shapes, their properties, and how to identify them in daily life. With easy examples and activities, these notes make it simple to recall key points quickly before exams.

By studying these notes, students learn about shapes and their uses in a fun, practical way. This guide helps improve observation skills and builds a strong foundation for understanding geometry in higher classes.