After we read about tessellations in The Great Number Rumble: A Story of Math in Surprising Places we decided to make our own artistic versions. I got the directions from Big Ideas for Small Mathematicians.
Tessellation is about regular patterns that split the plane up into lots of little tiles which fit together perfectly, without overlapping or leaving any gaps. Tessellation is fundamental to maths, because it’s all about symmetry.
We started with a cardboard square each (ours were about 5x5cm). We talked about how we could cover a page with squares without leaving any gaps.
First we cut a piece from the bottom of our square. We were careful not to cut the corners off, and we found it easiest to cut from corner to corner (to avoid having to measure where to reattach the cut piece on the other side). We slid the cut-off piece upwards, and attached it with tape to the top edge of the square.
Then we did the same on the left side of our square. We cut a piece out, slid it along to the right side, then reattached it.
I asked the children if we had added any cardboard to our shapes, or taken any away (no). We agreed, then, that our shapes should take up the same total amount of space as our original squares.
We traced around our shape on a blank piece of paper, then carefully moved it along and traced around it again. And again, and again until we’d covered the page.
Our tessellations looked so pretty, we decided to paint them.
J(8)’s didn’t cover his paper without gaps – he was adamant he wanted to create his art his way – but he understood the idea!
The artist M.C.Escher used tessellation to create amazing art. This BBC video clip is excellent!
Mathematicians know that their subject is beautiful. Escher shows us that it’s beautiful.
Prof. Ian Stewart, University of Warwick
For more maths ideas, visit the inspiring monthly carnival Math Teachers At Play over at my favourite maths blog, Let’s Play Math.
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So, so timely! I’m looking into tessallations and Escher as well. Thank you for sharing the resources you use. They’ll come in handy for us too. Escher’s art is so amazing, isn’t it? I get cross-eyed looking at some of his more complicated pieces. I can relate to J(8)’s wish to do art his way. Tiger was very much like this only a very short while ago. 🙂
How funny, Hwee! I just love the Escher maths/art crossover. And it’s encouraging to hear that Tiger used to be like J(8)!
We had one of the Escher paintings in our Come Look with Me Art book this year. I found it fascinating. Thank you for putting together this lesson. I bookmarked it and plan to use it next year.
It is fascinating, isn’t it? He’s an artist whose work I definitely want to explore more fully.
Fun.
🙂
Tesselations are fun, I like how you created the template.
And by the way, Escher is SOOOO cool. I used to have a few books with his stuff. I wonder what happened to them.
We watched a few more You Tube vids on Escher this morning, he is v cool. Let me us know if you can recommend any good books!
I look at your maths posts with a slight yearning. I want to do maths this way, I know I could do it and I know the children would just love it but I think it might just be the straw that broke the camels back! Oh well, I’ll just enjoy your posts, right now that’ll have to be good enough!
🙂 I seem to be most excited about maths right now – meanwhile your recent post reminded me of the pack of borax I’ve had sitting in the cupboard since Easter – science seems to be taking a back seat for a while!
Fun! My son had a whole class on tessellations in co-op last year. He loved it! Thanks for all of the great ideas, and for linking with Collage Friday!
Oh wow that must have been such a fun class!
Awesome! Math AND Art!
Yeah – I love it when that happens!
Where do you get that kind of paper.
Please answer fast
Hi Valeri, sorry I missed your comment before. We just used blank copy paper for the tesselations, although thicker paper may have been better to paint on! Lucinda