Cube Nets: Practice & Test
Watch all 11 cube nets fold in 3D, learn the opposite-face tricks, then sit a mini test where every answer is explained and folded in front of you.
Choose a net
Tap a net, then fold it and spin it.
Ready to test yourself?
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Keyboard: A to D to answer, Enter for next
Watch the net fold into the cube
Test complete.
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Keep the momentum going
Cube nets are one small slice of the 11+ non-verbal paper. Shape Sleuth, our free trainer, covers all eight question families with the same instant explanations. And if you want a proper plan, an experienced maths teacher will map one out with you in a free 15 minute consultation.
Nets, cubes and why spatial questions feel impossible
Net questions ask a child to fold a flat shape in their head and say what it becomes. Some children can do this immediately and others cannot do it at all, and the gap has very little to do with how good they are at maths. It is a skill that can be built, but only by folding things.
Why a flat diagram is the wrong place to learn this
Asking a child to visualise a fold from a printed net is asking them to run the simulation they have not yet built. Children who cannot do it are not being lazy. They have no mental model to run.
The model gets built by folding, physically or interactively, and watching what happens to the faces. Once a child has seen twenty folds happen, they start being able to predict the twenty first. That is why this tool animates the fold rather than just marking the answer.
The eleven nets of a cube
There are exactly eleven distinct nets that fold into a cube. That is a satisfying fact for a child and a genuinely useful one for the exam, because "is this a valid net" questions are drawn from the same small set.
Two rules do most of the work:
- Faces that touch on the net can never be opposite on the cube. Adjacent stays adjacent.
- Faces separated by exactly one square in a straight line end up opposite. This is the fastest way to answer "which face is opposite the shaded one".
A four-in-a-row strip with one square on each side covers the most common valid nets. A 2 by 2 block anywhere in the net means it cannot fold into a cube, because two faces would overlap. That single check eliminates a lot of options in a few seconds.
How to use this with a child who is stuck
Start by predicting before folding. Ask which face will end up opposite the shaded one, commit to an answer out loud, then run the fold and see. The prediction is where the learning happens. Watching the animation without predicting first teaches almost nothing.
Then move to paper. Cut out a net, mark the faces, fold it by hand. For a child who genuinely cannot visualise, ten minutes with scissors does more than an hour of screen practice.
Where nets appear beyond the 11+
They come back at GCSE inside surface area, where the reliable method for a tricky solid is to imagine it unfolded and add up the faces. Students who never built the spatial model at eleven find surface area harder at fifteen for reasons they cannot explain.
Our surface area and volume lessons teach it that way deliberately, starting from the net rather than the formula.
Questions parents ask
My child cannot visualise this at all. Is that a problem?
It is common and it responds well to physical practice. Spatial reasoning is trainable, and the children who improve most are usually the ones who start by folding real paper rather than staring at diagrams.
Give it a few weeks of short sessions before drawing any conclusions.
How much do nets come up in the 11+?
Regularly in the non-verbal reasoning and spatial sections, and occasionally in maths as a surface area or volume question.
It is a small slice of the paper, but it is a slice where a prepared child scores quickly and an unprepared one guesses.