Symmetry - Halloween style

It's only Monday and this week is already trying my patience considerably. After a somewhat stressful assembly practice that ran over into recess, I took my class outside and kept them out for an additional 10 minutes, made all the hyper ones run laps around the field and then took them all back inside where I totally scrapped the plans for the day and decided to teach my introductory lesson on lines of symmetry by making Halloween witches.

It was kind of fun. We cut out circles and folded them and folded them and folded them (to see how many lines of symmetry we could make - decided it could be an infinite number if we could fold closely enough together :) ) then we folded black paper and drew triangles. Luckily a few of them - totally by luck - turned out to be equilateral so we were able to discuss the fact that different shaped triangles had different numbers of lines of symmetry.

At this point a bright little spark shouted out that we were making witches :) so I was able to move on to the bodies quite easily.

The only rules were that every body part had to be cut on a fold so that it was symmetrical - it had to have at least one line of symmetry - and the kids had to fold every piece so that they could count the lines, before adding it to their picture.

I have to say they didn't manage all the directions perfectly but they didn't do a bad job. :)

I liked this dress - with one line of
symmetry neatly folded :)

And look at the adorable stockings and shoes!

When their pictures were finished we labelled them with lines of symmetry on one side and names of polygons on the other side - a combination math lesson!! If the shape wasn't a polygon they had to write "not a polygon" beside it. :)

It certainly showed me who still doesn't know the names of polygons (and who doesn't know what a polygon is at ALL) but in the end all the little witches turned out beautifully.

One cute little witch

Another cute little witch!

And a whole pile of symmetrical little witches!!

My girls weren't too sure if they were doing Math or Art :) but isn't that the best type of lesson anyway? Hopefully they'll remember something about lines of symmetry!! 

I think we'll do some more symmetrical Halloween stuff - bats and pumpkins would be fun. I'd quite like to have garlands of symmetrical bats flapping around the classroom.

Maybe tomorrow! :)