Montessori Elementary Homeschool Blog - with documentation of our infant Montessori, toddler Montessori, and primary Montessori experiences; as well as preparation for the upcoming adolescent Montessori homeschool years.
Showing posts with label tessellations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tessellations. Show all posts

Friday, January 22, 2016

Tessellations - Pattern Blocks - In Montessori

Tessellations are an awesome extension of the Montessori experiences. While not a "Montessori material", they are perfect for children of all ages.

There is one modification I make to them, to align them with Montessori principles: if they come with a set of design cards, I utilize any of the cards that show how the pieces form other pieces (this is akin to the constructive triangles material); and I remove all the cards that show designs.
The three cards on the right - we like those type for some self-guidance.
The two cards on the right - I prefer the children to discover those patterns for themselves. 

Why? Because the children should use the pieces to create their own designs and discover for themselves the variety of "pictures" they can form. I find too many times over that providing the design cards, locks a child's mind into design mode and less on creative pattern discovery.


Toys in a Montessori Home - Lower Elementary
Tessellation Patterns in our Co-Op

Informative and interesting site about Tessellations: Tessellations.org



Some 3-dimensional "tessellations" - the power of 2 in elementary and the power of 3 in adolescent mathematics.


Fractals extensions totally work off of here too!

Friday, May 25, 2012

Tessellation Patterns

While there is no specifically AMI Montessori album page for tessellations - they are just plain fun! And when presented right, with the right materials, they fit right in with Montessori.

While we do not encourage the children to create images (we want them to explore the shape, and the function of each shape - not be focused on creating boats and flowers) - elementary children do utilize them to create images. I encourage the exploration of shape and function and steer them away from creating images until it is inevitable.

Some samples of our work:

a friend's toes

exploring different kinds of flowers

what if we just use hexagons? what would happen?
note: this particular mode teaches far more
 more than creating a flower teaches a child ;) 

she was exploring pure shape; filling in gaps with other shapes,
seeing where it would lead (this is a transition stage into
creating intentional images)

Purely exploring with shapes - and look at the beautiful pattern emerging!