Tessellation project how to#
Tessellation project full#

Basically it ended up taking far longer than it should have. The only way I found to improve student outcomes on this step was to be ridiculously involved and hover over each child's shoulder. Everyday they came in they would b eg me to lead them in the tessellation boogie! And two of my classes even performed it for their teachers when they came to pick them up! :)ДЄfterwards, we look at a youtube clip of a variety of tessellations and I have the kids call out whether they think it's a translation, rotation, or reflection. Then we say 'translation!' and slide to the right, 'rotation!' and spin in a circle, and 'reflection!' and put our hands together and the jazz hands them apart in the air. To begin with, I have students stand up out of their chairs and repeat after me 'This is the tessellation boogie!' (with a tooonnnnnnn of attitude and shoulder bobbing). I came up with a little dance called the 'Tessellation Boogie'. The first one we looked at was a 'translation', then a 'rotation', and then a 'reflection.' To help students remember the names and to differentiate them from one another. We defined a 'tessellation' as being 'a pattern created with a repeating shape that does not overlap and could go on forever.' Then we talked about how there any many different types of tessellations, but that we could categorize some of them by how the shape in the pattern moves. We began by looking at a variety of his work including 'Drawing Hands' and 'Relativity' (they LOVED these pieces) as well as his tessellation art. On day one we looked at a powerpoint I put together that looked at the Dutch artist M.C. If you want to challenge kids to create their own tessellating shape, you can find the printable pattern block sheets that I used here.The first project that I decided to do with my 4th graders was a tessellation project. The leaf page will open, and you can print from there. Ready to print your leaf tessellations? Click on the link below. We glued our leaves on a piece of poster board to make a huge collaborative work of art.

You can arrange all of the leaves facing the same direction, or you can alternate rows of right-side-up and upside-down leaves. The cool thing about this leaf shape is that it can tessellate in two different ways. Older kids will be able to cut these out themselves, but for younger ones you may want to do the cutting so that the leaves will fit together well.

Tessellation project full#

I cut out all our leaves first, but they probably would have been easier to color on the full page. Then I created a page with five of the leaves, so that you can print it and give it to the kids to color. Then I outlined it in Sharpie and added some veins to the leaf. To make my shape as exact as possible, I traced it from a sheet of printable pattern blocks. (And creating designs that are not supposed to be anything specific are even easier!)

Tessellation project how to#

But it didnвЂ™t take long to figure out how to make a leaf shape that would tessellate. This is not entirely foolproof вЂ“ my first leaf design looked cool but did not tessellate, despite being built entirely of the green triangle shapes. If you create a shape out of smaller shapes that tessellate (triangles, in this case), then your shape will tessellate. We have found that pattern blocks also work well for creating tessellations. You can see an example of this approach here. Cut a shape out of one side, and then attach the piece you cut to the opposite side of the paper.

One way to create a geometric shape that tessellates is to start with a square or rectangular piece of paper, such as an index card. This is a great fall STEM project to do either at home or with a class! In this post, IвЂ™ll show you some tips for helping kids create their own tessellating shape, and then you can also print the leaf shape that I designed. A tessellation is defined as a geometric shape that can be arranged in a repeating pattern with no gaps between the tiles and no overlapping. Celebrate the colors of fall with this leaf tessellation project! I think that tessellating shapes are fascinating, and such a fun mix of math and art.