Easter - Geometry - German

We recently explored artistic geometry while learning about Easter symbols.  Labeling the forms with German words helped us learn new German vocabulary.

Sun and Cross

Egg Shape and Cross

Enjoying Math!

We've been enjoying math lately!  Come and take a peek....

Time Charts (seasons, months, weather, solstice/equinox -- thank you to the amazing Our Little Nature Nest blog for inspiration!)

Mathematicians (theories, biography writing)

Artistic Geometry

Tesselations

Clock

Our Spiral Path

There's just something about spirals...beautiful, geometric, artistic, mathematical, magical, mesmerizing....

This past year, we studied "phi", the Golden ratio, phyllotaxis, and spirals. Now, we see spirals everywhere...flowers, leaf patterns, shells....

We built a labyrinth at our old house (great homeschooling project!), but we don't quite have enough space at our new house for a labyrinth.

Labyrinth at our old house

So, instead, we have built a spiral! Daddy and the kids carved out a path in the vines, spiraling towards the fountain near Rabbie and Navy's cage. We collected rocks from the river and the yard to line the spiral. Mommy planted some wildflower seeds in the dirt areas and they are starting to sprout!

The spiral may be seen from the deck and from Joey's room. It's a meditative reminder to us whenever we see it.


Where do you see spirals?

Freehand Artistic Geometry

Ricky, Joey and Mommy have been doing artistic geometry drawings once a week this year. Making shapes out of circles, using a compass and protractor, and measuring with rulers have all been important.

This month, we are trying something new! Instead of using drawing tools, we have been doing our geometry "freehand". First, we started off with drawing angles. After completing our angle examples, we checked with a protractor and realized that we were pretty close! Next, we did some of the drawings from the book Artistic Geometry, such as the Hexagram, and 6 Circles from 1. Next, we will be drawing items from nature, such as shells and leaves.

Artistic Geometry

Geometry is our favorite form of math. Through drawing and building, we experience geometry in different, artistic ways.

The two older kids and Mommy each create a drawing, following the book Artistic Geometry by John Miles. We are learning lines, angles, circles, bi-secting angles, and a variety of polygrams. Shading colors into the angles with our Lyra colored pencils (we purchase these at Great Forest Toys in Fair Oaks, CA) brings the shapes to life!

We tend to stay away from plastic materials, however, we came across two wonderful products at the HSC conference in Sacramento last year. Zometools connect lines into spheres at different angles. We create different polygons and stellations with our Zometools. Here is a picture of Ricky's stellated dodecahedron inside of an icosahedron.

Tubespace are slim tubes that bend and connect into the 5 polyhedra and other shapes. They also glow in the dark!

Folding Circles books are some of our favorite home-learning resources. We fold circles into tetrahedrons, octahedrons and other shapes. Then, we tape or bobby pin shapes together into larger shapes. As the seasons change, we use different colors of circular paper (we buy this at Rudolph Steiner College bookstore) and then our creations become part of our learning environment for a few months. You can see pictures here of our folding circles from autumn hanging from the lamp along with some origami birds, and our current octahedron creations for the winter.

Winter brings snow...or at least in some parts of the world! Although we live about an hour from the snow-capped Sierra mountains, we decided to bring "snow" into our home by making symmetrical snowflakes for our windows out of winter colors. We used kite paper from Rudolph Steiner College bookstore. Gluing smaller versions of the snowflakes onto glass jars, we lit some beeswax candles and watched the beautiful shapes glow in the candlelight!

Speaking of kite paper...one of our latest geometrical adventures is folding window stars. One of our family Christmas gifts was a lovely book, Stars and Flowers Window Transparencies by Frederique Gueret.