Patterns and Tessellation

I had a ton of fun preparing a Patterns and Tessellation workshop for FBI (Fun Brain Institute, our local home ed co-op) this week.  The kids who attend FBI usually range from 0-10 years old, and my voice is still a bit dodgy, so this presentation was very brief ... we did a whirlwind tour of tessellation, patterns in nature, maths and art.  After writing up the first few Fibonacci numbers (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13) a few kids were able to continue the pattern.

I flicked through these library books (and some printed pictures) as we talked about bee hives, snow flakes, architecture, mosaics, M.C. Escher and cells in the human body.

We also did a craft round-robin (cutting snowflakes, icing biscuits and making pop-stick puzzles), table games, played tunnel ball and had a story and music session.  Many children coloured in a tessellating pattern at some point during the day.  Here are some of the games & manipulatives we used:

Tantrix is shown top left.  Other games we enjoyed playing included Tangram, KogWorks, Mastermind and Block by Block.

I promised to share some links to relevant websites with explanations, printable pages and best of all, interactive tools to play with ... so here they are!  Please look at them with your children, because there are links within links and I can't check that all of them are appropriate for little eyes.

The maths of tessellation:
http://www.coolmath.com/lesson-tessellations-1.htm
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tessellation.html
http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/whattess.html

Galleries, information, DIY instructions and summary of software to create tessellations:
http://www.tessellations.org/tess-what.htm
http://www.tessellations.com/

Tessellation grids to view or print and colour in:

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/tess/index.htm 

M.C.Escher:
http://www.worldofescher.com/gallery/
http://www.mcescher.com/
http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/jbaraki.htm

View Escher-style patterns, or buy a cool colouring book:

http://www.tabletoptelephone.com/~hopspage/HopsTiles.html 

AND NOW FOR THE REAL FUN...
Free Interactive games (play with tessellating shapes on your screen):
http://shmuzzles.com/shmuzzle/shmuzzle.htm
http://www.mathcats.com/explore/tessellationtown.html
http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/frames_asid_163_g_3_t_3.html

Easy on-screen activity ... cut a snowflake:
http://snowflakes.barkleyus.com/make-a-flake.swf  

Read about snow, ideas for fun ways to MAKE snowflakes:
http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/snow/snow.html

AND more ... lots of links ... tessellation, patterns, fractals, Fibonacci and other fascinating maths!
http://www.uen.org/themepark/patterns/tessellation.shtml
http://42explore.com/teslatn.htm
http://www.cap.nsw.edu.au/bb_site_intro/stage2_Modules/tesselations/tesselations.htm
http://members.cox.net/fathauerart/index.html
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_GBwuYuOOs

It's hard to stop ... but there you have it.  A glimpse into the glorious world of maths ... I hope you and your kids will enjoy some of these links!