Representing exponents

Today we looked at representing exponents in a visual way.  We used a toothpick to represent x, and we built x squared by making a square with side length x.

We can represent multiple ideas using these tools.  Here are 3 x squared

If the number is in brackets and included in the base, it changes things.

Here is one square with dimensions 2x.  Inside it we can see that there are 4 x squares in the expression (2x)squared.

We were able to build x cubes too

It was harder to build bigger models like (3x)cubed because of the structural limitations.  We tried though!
We had a creative approach using plastecine that worked nicely
There are 27 little cubes in there!