Mandala Geometry Challenge - Elementary School

I recreated a Mandala with my 7 year old.

After watching her 13 year old sister recreate a mandala - Mandala Geometry Challenge - 13 Year Old daughter, my 7 year old was up for the same challenge.

Obviously she needed lots more help with the steps and couldn't create the mandala on her own, but with assistance, this activity was an age appropriate, math learning extravaganza.

First, a mandala was selected to recreate using only a compass and straight edge. There was no measuring or guessing allowed in the reconstruction process, and I was happy that my 7 year old selected a fairly simple mandala.

There are several different ways to recreate the above mandala which are simple and work well. Here are the basic steps we followed:

1. Draw a circle with a line passing through the center.

 2. Create a perpendicular bisector.

3. Create perpendicular bisectors through the at least one radial segment. The bisectors are represented by tick marks in the above picture.
4. Set the compass radius from the center of the circle to the tick mark shown in the above photo. Draw a light circle concentric with the existing circle.
5. The centers of four of the circles are now known. To find the centers for the remaining four circles, bisect each of the 90 degree angles. The center points will be where the bisectors cross the small circle.

 6. Draw the eight circles.

 7. Outline.

 8. Color.

Other Mandala construction tutorials are available on our Math Page.