I asked the kids what they wanted to do for our Family Math project today and they told me they’d like to do another project from Patty Paper Geometry:
We found a neat way to explore triangle congruence in Chapter 8, so we dove into that project this morning. Here’s the introduction and a brief discussion about the difference between “congruent” and “equal”:
Next we prepared for the project with the camera off. The boys drew a random triangle on one piece of patty paper and then copied (and cut out) the side lengths on a different piece. The main part of this project is to explore whether or not you can make a non-congruent triangle out of the three side lengths.
Finally, we wrapped up by looking the same problem using a compass and straight edge. That part went find and the boys seem to believe in side-side-side congruence after these two exercises.
What was a fun surprise here is that my younger son wondered whether or not side-side-side-side would be a congruence theorem for quadrilaterals. My older son came up with a counterexample 🙂
So, another fun project from Patty Paper Geometry! I really love this book 🙂
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