Tessellations

Tracing a tessellation

3rd grade students have been looking at the artwork of M.C. Escher and designing their own tessellations.  Students learned that a tessellation is a specific type of pattern: there are no spaces between the shapes, and no overlaps.  Tessellation tiles fit together perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle.  A honeycomb is a great example of tessellation in nature!

Students started with a rectangle of oaktag and drew a line from one bottom corner to the next.  The line could look however they wanted as long as they didn’t mind tracing it later!  After drawing the line, students carefully cut out the piece, slid it to the top of their oaktag, aligned it so the edges fit together neatly, and taped it in place.

Afterwards, students traced their tiles onto a large sheet of paper as many times as they could.  Then we had fun looking at each one and deciding what it looked like.  Our next step is to add details and bring our idea to life!