Sharing a Craig Kaplan post with kids part 2

Yesterday we used a recent post from Craig Kaplan as a way to talk a little bit about algebra and geometry:

Heesch numbers, Part 1https://t.co/wW6yTQf8DB
Excited for this series on tilings from @cs_kaplan!#math #mathchat #geomchat #mbpick

— Patrick Honner (@MrHonner) June 27, 2017

Here’s that project:

Sharing a Craig Kaplan post with kids

After the project I printed 12 of the pentagons and had the kids play with them today. See Kaplan’s post for some historical notes about the pentagon. The historical importance is probably too advanced for kids to appreciate, but what they can appreciate is that this pentagon can be surrounded in multiple ways. I had the boys play around to see what they could find.

Here’s what my younger son found:

Here’s what my older son found:

This project was really neat. I think making shapes like the one in Kaplan’s post is a great way for kids to review (or even get introduced to!) both equations of lines and some elementary geometry. Also, as always, it is extremely fun for kids to explore ideas that are interesting to professional mathematicians 🙂

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