What a great assessment to give young mathematicians in order to test their knowledge on two- and three-dimensional shapes. Learners name various shapes, identify the number of edges, faces, and vertices, match an unfolded version of a...

Float like a butterfly, think like a bee! Build a huge hive, hexagonally! Find out the reason that hexagons are the most efficient storage shape for the honeybees' honeycombs. This neat little video would be a sweet addition to your life...

Middle and high schoolers participate in a seven-part lesson creating Escher-Esque tessellations. They demonstrate their knowledge of geometric transformations after viewing a PowerPoint presentation, conducting Internet research, and...

Here is a great science lesson. It extends the concept of vision into the area of optical illusions, perspective, and tessellation. This well-designed plan has tons of great activities, utilizes interesting video, and should lead to a...

Fifth and sixth graders explore prime numbers. They work with a partner to build rectangular arrays using twelve tiles. Factor pairs are noted and recorded on graph paper. Pupils construct rectangular arrays with a prime number and...

Students explore tessellations. In this shapes and geometry lesson, students describe the attributes of many of the shapes displayed on an Elmo. Students create examples of tessellations using pattern blocks.

New ReviewCombine geometry and tradition with a lesson that spotlights Navajo weaving. The book, The Goat in the Rug by Charles L. Blood and Martin Link hooks scholars before watching a video of Navajo people tending their sheep and beginning to...

What more could we want from floor tiles? Using pattern blocks and graph paper, pupils determine ways to completely tile a floor of given dimensions. They consider the aesthetic quality of the tiles by creating a tessellation and...

Cook up a nice new kitchen. Future designers apply quadrilaterals to design a new kitchen floor. They create a tessellation and determine the area of the pattern. As an added component and real-world application, they must stick to a...

A trip around the world sounds nice, but for now we'll just have to make do with Google Earth. Pupils use pictures of landmarks to apply geometry concepts. They determine whether each building has bilateral or rotational symmetry, search...

Cover the floor with math. Pupils work to determine the proper shape to cover a kitchen floor. They first determine the number of tiles to purchase and configure their placement to reduce the amount of waste. Teams finish by creating a...

Make masterful art using math. An interesting activity has learners create artwork involving tesselations. First they cut out a base shape from index cards, then they apply translations to complete their masterpieces.

Make the connections between area, tiling, and multiplication. A performance task and associated unit presents the concept of area and makes the connection to multiplication. Pupils work through three major sections of instruction that...

Tessellate to fascinate your pupils. Watching a video helps them first understand the idea of tessellations. It then shows how the interior angles of shapes undergoing tessellations will sum to 360 degrees at points where their vertices...

Build a pattern by rotating a figure around one of its vertices. A segment of an extensive playlist on basic geometry introduces the concept of tessellations through regular tessellations. The video shows how to create tessellations and...

Polygons — it's all about the angles. Groups work with dynamic geometry software to find the sum of the measures of the angles of various polygons. After finding the information for several polygons, the groups generate a formula that...

How much fabric is necessary for bunting? Scholars use given dimensions of triangular bunting (hanging decorations) to determine the amount of fabric necessary to decorate a rectangular garden. The task requires pupils to consider how...

Acute angles, nets, and vertices are only a few terms that a set of flash cards includes. Among the 108 cards, two types are available; word cards printed in bold-faced lettering, and corresponding definition cards equipped with an...

What does it mean for apples to have chirality? This and other explorations in geometry, such as tiling the plane, boxing a tetrahedron, and investigating Euclid's Characteristic, are included in this resource on Euclidean geometry....

The magic number is six! Using a 6x table, young math stars practice adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing two-digit numbers with the number six. This instructional activity also touches on making tessellations with hexagons. 

Bringing together the young artists and the young organizers in your class, this lesson takes that popular topic of tessellations and gives it algebraic roots. After covering a few basic properties and definitions, learners attack the...

Discover the prevalence of geometric design in Islamic culture with this wonderful informational video. It begins with an overview of the complexity of designs dating back to the eighth century during early Islam, and then delves into...

Young geometers and biologists investigate the math of nature in an activity that is just the bee's knees. Participants will study the tessellations of hexagons in a beehive, along with the natural rationale behind the specific shape....

Show your class one way in which art and math are related by teaching them about M.C. Escher. Class members read a brief passage and then respond to five related questions.