Tessellations

Make Your Own Tessellations
1. Using Claris Works.
 http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/cwtess.html
2. Step by step with "Paintbrush" or "Paint"
 http://www.wsd1.org/lgc98/teach/Paint/makefish.htm
3. Online
 http://www.iusb.edu/~abrown/tess1.html from http://www.iusb.edu/~abrown/tessellations.html

Investigating tessellations
Using pattern blocks links to activities using pattern blocks in colour.
http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/active.html
    Warm Up Activity Using Activity Pattern Blocks, designed to familiarize the student with the vocabulary of     polygons.
    Activity Pattern Block Student Tessellation Samples, photographs of Activity Pattern Block creations made by students.
    How to use the Patterns Program.
    Experiment online with the shapes.

Tessellation Town
A place where the main occupation is making mosaics.
Have students build their own personal Tessellation Town.
http://www.mathcats.com/explore/tessellations/tesspeople.html

Further Activity Sites - Shodor
A huge site with over 100 java based activities - lots of sections
http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/index.html
The Tessellation page is at
http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/tessellate/index.html

Teacher Vision Activities
http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-3522.html

Series Of Lessons
Including Pictures Of "Lined & Blank" Tessellations to copy.
Mathematicians define "tessellate" as covering a plane with a pattern, and it is a concept that interests scientists and artists, as well as mathematicians.
http://mathcentral.uregina.ca/RR/database/RR.09.96/archamb1.html#nibble


Intriguing Tessellations
http://members.aol.com/tessellations/
http://www.cromp.com/tess/home.html

Tessellating Animation
http://www.k4.dion.ne.jp/~mnaka/home.index.html
Japanese artist Makoto Nakamura has taken tessellations a step beyond the plane with his awesome animations. See his tessellated birds fly, his tessellated fish swim, and his tessellated dancers dance. Next, visit Nakamura's Jigsaw Puzzles reassemble tessellated cats, pigeons, gorillas and more.

Totally Tessellated
http://library.thinkquest.org/16661/
Don't skip over this opening splash screen too quickly. Take a few moments to scroll through the image gallery by clicking on the tiny Load New Images link. It has a section on M.C. Escher, the Dutch artist and father of modern-day tessellations.

What is a Tessellation?
http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/whattess.html

Some Examples Done By Kids
http://warrensburg.k12.mo.us/belltess/belltess.htm


Math Forum Pages
A great introduction to tessellations for those who know some geometry.
An excellent, detailed Tutorial on Tessellations
http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/tess.intro.html

http://mathforum.org/~sarah/java.gsp/sarah.tessellations.gsp.html

Tessellations Webquest
http://edservices.aea7.k12.ia.us/edtech/teacherpages/skgreen/index.html

Tessellations
10 lessons on the topic http://mathcentral.uregina.ca/RR/database/RR.09.96/archamb1.html

Other Material
http://www.uen.org/themepark/html/patterns/tessellation.html

http://mathforum.org/~sarah/shapiro

Ed Services
Art and Math Tessellation Tutorials

http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/tess.intro.html

A few links at:
http://michaelshepperd.tripod.com/resources/tessellations.html

Some Fun Things To Do With Tessellations:

- get some books on MC Escher - he was a Dutch artist/ mathematician and did some fantastic stuff with tessellations (as well as pictures that "go nowhere") 

- you can buy colouring books of his work. Most libraries will have his books, or there's some internet sites below

- get the kids to make some - start with a square (it's easiest but other shapes can be used).  

-Cut a shape from one side and tape it in exactly the same place facing the same direction as the cut out section on the opposite (parallel) side - you now have a very simple shape that will exactly (depending on accuracy of cutting and pasting) tessellate (trace around one).

- once the kids have mastered the simple square, make some that are pictures - as long as whatever is cut from one side is stuck to the other, it will tessellate.

- experiment with different shapes as tessellation pieces 

- some will need a combination of two shapes to fill an area (eg overlapping hexagons will create a star in the middle if corners overlap)

- Dale Seymour put out a book years ago called Tessellation Masters (I have the name and I remember if had a green cover, but don't have any other details, sorry),  but it was full of all sorts of tessellation pages 

- blackline masters that could be studied or coloured. 

- There are all sorts of patterns that could be developed with them.
Something else you could try - only allow the kids to use a certain number of colours and not have any one colour touching - see if it's possible to colour the whole page with 4 colours or 6 colours etc.

- just study the complexities of various tessellations and colour use (see below for Escher egs and other sites)

- once the kids have made some (physically), draw a grid on paper and draw tessellations and make into animals or ghosts or whatever (by looking at Escher's stuff they'll get an idea of colour use for effective patterns.)

Here's a site for Escher's stuff - a commercial site but shows the prints...especially look at day and night http://www.worldofescher.com/ 

Another one - look at gecko and fish - very interesting examples of complex tessellations http://www.cs.unc.edu/~davemc/Pic/Escher/

A site with lots of links to other tessellation pages
http://www.citeforum.org/math/instructional/modules/tech/gs/Tessellation/resources.html

Go down to mathematics - geometry and art for lots of links http://www.midland.k12.tx.us/resource/oct00.htm#curriculum

Escher sites: http://www.geocities.com/mcescher76/SalaTran/salatran.htm
(try clicking on all the links in the top-right navigation box for more pictures)

http://library.think quest.org/16661/
(this is a site created by students - very impressive)

This site has tessellation art/maths lesson plans for primary, lower and higher secondary, which may provide some inspiration: http://ant.metnet.state.mt.us/~mtn/tesselations.html