Sometimes a project that was supposed to teach one concept ends up covering multiple concepts.  This was one such project.

We started out looking at a variety of shapes and how we can move them. Students identified flips, slides and turns.  We then talked about language and learned to use the terms: reflections, translations, and rotations.

Students thought about where these concepts would be used in the real world.  One idea was in quilts.  This sparked a discussion about quilts and how important they were in the early settlers’ lives.

We decided to design our own quilt blocks. Students started with squares and began to fold along lines of symmetry to create new shapes.  They put these shapes together to create a quarter of a quilt block. This turned into a discussion about fractions.  Students identified fractions in their colours and shapes.

Students created 3 more identical squares and put them together using reflections, translations and rotations to create their own quilt blocks.