Since Sue is doing it with her groups as well, here is a more about the activity. We will probably spend at least one more piece of time, making a Natural Math flag out of all stars and star-like structures kids developed.
- The goal is to make a "pointy star": a polygon where convex and concave parts alternate, forming "star rays."
Corollary: the smallest possible number of rays is three (not yet reached by kids, but getting there with discussions).
- You can use ONE snip of scissors to make your stars (unless you are experimenting - but one snip is the goal here). That's what Betsy Ross did!
Corollary: you got to fold your paper before cutting! You can't just cut out the star shape out of a flat piece of paper.
Corollary: there is a particular "star fold" that gets you there (started by kids during the initial exploration, but help was needed; many happy accidents involve half-stars and other funky creations)
Corollary: the number of rays in your star is half the number of layers in that particular star fold (started by kids, but needs more work; Will is leading this effort)
Corollary: 16 rays is about as many as you can make out of magazine paper without breaking your scissors! (Jessi was leading the effort of making multi-ray stars)
The unexpected: you can make two stars at once by first folding the paper, then making the regular star fold out of this double paper! (discovered by Yasmin, who experimented a whole lot)
The unexpected: you can fold interesting origami-like planes using stars as the basis. I heard of square folding and circle folding, but star folding is a promising new direction, apparently! (investigated by two Noahs)
Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
http://www.naturalmath.comMake math your own, to make your own math.