3D Shapes Worksheets – New & Engaging

Naming 3D Shapes

The image below contains the names of common 3D Shapes including: Cube, Cylinder, Sphere, Triangular Prism, Cuboid, Cone, Square Based Pyramid and Tetrahedron. 2D Shapes are flat, for example polygons. 3D Shapes are not flat, they have faces and edges.

3D Shapes Key Words

The image below contains key words for 3D shapes, including vertices, edges, straight, curve, faces, corner, vertex, sides, depth, flat and prism. Vertex is singular and vertices is plural. All prism have vertices but not all 3D shapes have vertices. A "donut shape" does not contain vertices.

Not all 3d shapes are prisms such as the shapes below.

Properties of 3D Shapes

The image below shows the properties of 3D Shapes. Most 3D shapes have faces, vertices (corners) and edges.

A circle is a flat 2D shape. In the image below the circle shape is a spherical shape called a sphere. Spheres have one face and hemisphere have two faces. A triangular prism has 5 faces, 6 vertices and 9 edges.

3D Shapes Prism and Non Prisms

Prisms have a uniform cross-section. We learn how to find the volume of 3d prisms using a special formula. The formula for volume of prism is cross-sectional area multiplied by depth. In the diagram below the cross-sectional area is shaded blue. The cross-sectional area of a prism is always uniform which means the blue face shown is congruent across the z-axis.

A square-based pyramid, sphere, cone and tetrahedron are examples of 3d shapes that aren't prisms.

3d shapes can be drawn on isometric paper. We can also draw the side view and plans and elevations of 3d shapes on square paper. The plan is also called the "birds eye view".