Here are a few links to other geometry construction tasks:
- Andrew Stadel's Name Tent Challenge
- Constructing a Heptagon (Is it possible?)
- Trisecting the angle (impossible with Euclidean axioms, possible with origami axioms)
More geometry links:
- James Tanton worked with Great Courses on a geometry video series. Cool!
- Geometry Tasks
Posts
Sue,
ReplyDeleteHave been seeing you comment for a while on mathbabe and never realized you had such a great blog yourself. The on-line construction games are really fun and well-done.
For our early elementary kids, I have a sense that it is really valuable for them to interact as much as possible with physical objects rather than always virtual ones. We have done two things to make the construction tools more accessible to them:
(1) use a safety compass: this was inadvertent because we bought it along with a set of other things, but it takes away my fear that the compass point will stab someone during their play/exploration.
(2) make the whole activity about exploring the tools and building a cool looking picture (including color highlights as desired).
They may not be learning how to bisect an angle or construct common tangents to two circles, but they are still building an intuition about what the tools do and something in how they can sequence them to build up complex designs.
FWIW, I'm blogging about the (math) games we play with our little ones at 3 J's Learning.
I love your blog, and plan to follow it.
DeleteI agree that little kids should be introduced to the physical tools first. But my bad experience with physical tools makes me want a caveat: If a kid is particularly frustrated, or isn't doing as well with tools as they do with intellectual tasks, introduce the virtual tools soon. I was never good at constructions (compass always slipped?) and didn't enjoy them, until I discovered these sites.