3D shapes are everywhere, especially in the classroom. If you can’t afford store-bought manipulatives for your class, don’t sweat it. You may already have examples of cubes, cuboids, spheres, and cylinders right in your class. I’m talking about classroom stationery like math manipulatives, erasers and sharpeners. Yes, seriously. I love finding awesome teaching ideas. As an Amazon affiliate, I may earn a commission for purchases using my links. Learn more. The ideas and paid links below are based on Amazon finds that are great for making 3D shapes for your classroom.

So I used here some alphabet blocks, you can also use plain wooden blocks. I forgot to add these to my picture but I’ve used these both for crafts and for math (teaching volume).

Other everday examples of cubes are die cubes, rubix cubes, alphabet blocks, base 10 unit blocks, cube erasers, and interlocking blocks.

The rectangular prisms in the picture are a sponge, Post-It notes, erasers, a pencil sharpener, and a box of paperclips.

Other things you may have are Jenga blocks and Cuisenaire Rods, and magnetic whiteboard erasers. I saw another type of mechanical sharpener that could work on Amazon.

These may interest you:

You can also use the cylindrical whiteboard erasers,

Examples of spheres in the clasroom are below. These are little erasers and sharpeners. Cute! Click the pictures to see more.

I really enjoy putting together this collection. I’ve lots of other blog posts about 3D shape projects for your classroom. See them below:

Click here, here and here to download and try my free 3D shape worksheets! All of my resources for 3D shapes are here at my TpT collection.

If you like DIY projects, see how to make your own 3D shapes in this blog post.