Math Art for Middle Schoolers

We recreated geometrical art from the book Japanese Optical and Geometrical Art.

Learning about geometry by recreating mandalas has been a regular activity in our house this year. (Links to math/art mandala posts can be found on my Math Page.) Using designs from Japanese Optical and Geometrical Art employed the same techniques, tools and principals as the mandala projects, but were a step harder in difficulty.

The book is filled with designs businesses can use in logos, and artists can place on t-shirts. Designers of many types find this book interesting.

First a design was selected. Then it was analyzed. One of the first steps in analyzing a new rotationally symmetric design to recreate is counting the number of axes. Snowflakes have three axis, resulting in six points of symmetry. The design pictured below has eight.

From there we built upon techniques practiced when recreating mandalas; bisecting angles, bisecting line segments, creating segments of equal length, etc.....

Each recreation is a new lesson in problem solving and creative thinking. To get started with these types of activities please refer to my Math Page.

Check out these great blogs full of educational activity ideas.

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