tesselations

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tesselations
By Teresa

I love these! I start my lesson by showing each group of 4 a set of M.C. Escher's famous tesselation art. (I downloaded them from various Internet sites. Just use a search engine, there are lots.) They talk about what makes
the work unique. Then we define a tesselation is ANY figure that can cover a field with no overlaps or gaps. I have the groups manipulate squares, rectangles, equilateral and isoceles triangles, rhombuses, (which all are tesselations) and circles, and various other shapes )which are not). They decide, we check as a class. Then, we finally make our own using 3"x3" index cards. I have some

of the kids rotate their cut-offs and others just slide them. Then they figure out how to trace them onto a field of plain paper and color it. It is fun to describe what they think it looks like. I invariably have kids making tesselations for at least a week at home and bringing them in to show off.