A Kimono Costume from a Plastic Tablecloth

The teens had an Asian themed "How to Host a Murder Party" to go to for the last night of youth group.  Their leader encouraged them to come in costume, if at all possible.  T (age 17) found a cap at the party supply store, and was good to go...

...but the only other Asian themed items we could find in the store, besides paper fans, were napkins, and plastic tablecloths.

Since there was nothing else, we grabbed a couple of the fans, and two of the tablecloths, and headed home to see what we could do with them.  They were rectangular, and white in the middle, with red and gold strips running down each side.

We folded them in half, short sides together, as shown.

Then, we cut a round neck hold in the center of the folded part, so they could slip on over the girls' heads.

Starting at the short ends, we cut the strips away from the white center...

...stopping about four inches from the girls' arm pits.

If we'd had an extra tablecloth, we probably would have left the arm streamers really long, but we needed some of the red for belts, bows, and trim, so we shortened the arms by about half.

We stapled the bottom...

...and inside edges of the arm streamers closed.

G taped some of the red stripping onto the bottom edges of the white, for trim.  A left hers plain.

We taped together some of the pieces to make belts, folding in the raw edges...

...and stapling, rather than tying them, at the back (that made them a one time wear, but that was all we needed).

We added a little piece of tape to the front to hold the belt in place...

...and stapled bows (pieces pinched and stapled in the middle) to the back for a finishing touch to the robes.

They weren't authentic by any stretch of the imagination, but with fans in hand, and chopsticks in hair, they didn't look too bad...

...for a couple of plastic tablecloths.

Fractal Christmas Tree Paper Craft

I saw one last Christmas themed fractal, as I was sorting through Google images, that I thought would be perfect to turn into a paper, cut and glue, craft for the children.  If you do an Internet search for "Christmas fractals" you'll find an amazing assortment of mesmerizing images, as well as a few of these simple little trees.

We worked on our tree as a group.

D (age 11) made the base (a Sierpinski carpet)  by trimming a sheet of brown construction paper into a square...

...then cutting that square into 9 smaller squares, and removing the center square...

...and cutting the remaining squares into 9 smaller squares...

...and removing the center squares.  Normally we would have left the large square intact, and cut the middle squares out with a pen knife, or razor blade.  Unfortunately, since our move, I haven't been able to locate any of our pen knives, so we just cut the squares apart with scissors, and taped them back into place around the omitted squares.

When the squares got too small for cutting and taping, D switched to coloring in the middle squares, to represent a blank section.

While he worked on that, A (age 13) joined the younger children (after abandoning the fractal snowflake puzzle project that was going on, at the same time, in the basement), in cutting 9 sheets of green construction paper into large equilateral triangles, to be cut apart again, and again, each time removing the center triangle, in preparation for the Sierpinski triangle branches.

Being a middle schooler, I decided to have her cut the triangles one time more than I would have had the younger children cut.  Which, made for enough measuring and cutting of triangles, that the snowflake project was beginning to look better and better to her, but also made for a prettier pattern in the end.

While, their older siblings were measuring and cutting, I gave the younger girls (ages 8 and 10) a sheet of Apollonian gaskets (you can find printable images of them on many different sites), to color in...

...as Christmas ornaments.

I pieced the tree together, incorrectly at first (all those triangles were going to my head)...

...and the younger girls traced, cut out, and pieced together two more equilateral triangles to form the second iteration of the Koch snowflake - or in other words, a star, for the top of the tree.

We decided there were too many triangles to tape back together, and that it would be better to glue them down to a sheet of paper, instead.  After looking around the house for sheets large enough to fit behind the tree (we needed something about 4'x4'), we settled on one of the plastic tablecloths we had used under our toothpick and marshmallow star.

I think a red, or yellow background would have been even better, but we had green (left over from a Lego Friends birthday party) and so it had to do.

After the glue dried, we cut the excess tablecloth away...

...and hung the tree as a replacement for the grid art turkey we'd hung on the wall before Thanksgiving (again, down in the dark, photograph hating basement)...

...where it appears much brighter, and more mathematically festive, in real life.

Crafting Fractal Snowflakes, and Exploring the Incarnation of Christ. A Christmas Math/Craftivity.

 
At Christmastime we celebrate God becoming man, and walking with us.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory...John 1:14a

The incarnation, infinite God in a finite form, can be difficult for children to grasp.  Honestly, it can be difficult for adults to wrap their minds around.  In fact, it's a concept theologians have been grappling with since the beginning of the Church. And yet, it's a concept we can see illustrated in nature, if we look closely enough, and mapped out for us in mathematics textbooks - cool textbooks, anyway - in the back chapters dealing with fractal geometry.

Fractals provide beautiful illustrations of infinity in a finite space.  They also lend themselves nicely to Christmas crafting, as so many of them are shaped perfectly to become (with proper coloring, and a touch of imagination) Christmas decorations.  I'm hoping to explore several this week, with the children, as we craft, bake, decorate our house, and contemplate the wonder of the Christmas story.

We started today, with a very simple math lesson/Christmas craftivity - building a Koch snowflake, one iteration (or step) at a time, out of marshmallows and toothpicks.

I starting by laying out a couple of plastic tablecloths on the living room floor.  Then, I asked the younger children to make three lines, each with 36 toothpicks connected by marshmallows.

They connected the three equal rows together to form an equilateral triangle. 

We stopped for a minute to review what an equilateral triangle is - a triangle with three equal sides, and three equal angles - measuring the angles with a protractor to make sure they were equal, and that they did in fact add up to 180°, as we expected. 

Then, we reviewed the concept of perimeter - the distance around the outside of an object - and measured the perimeter of our triangle in toothpicks, recording our findings on our dry erase board.

With that done, we then divided the sides (each of which was 36 toothpicks long) into three sections (12 toothpicks each), and built three new equilateral triangles (similar - the same shape, but different size - to our first triangle) over the center third of each side.

Once we had noted, that even though smaller, our 12 sided triangles were still equilateral, with angles all measuring 60°, we removed the base of each of the small triangles, and discovered that now, instead of a triangle with a perimeter of 108 toothpicks...

...we had a star, with a perimeter of 144 toothpicks.  At this point, the children thought we were running out of room on our tablecloth, and would have to stop expanding our shape.  So, they were surprised, when I instructed them to make additional equilateral triangles over the middle third of each newly created side. 

The sides of our star measured 12 toothpicks each, so our new triangles had sides of 4 toothpicks, and changed our star into a snowflake - an amazing snowflake, that somehow did not move any closer to the edges of the tablecloth than the star, which had had a perimeter of 144 toothpicks, even though it now had a perimeter of 192 toothpicks.

We stopped there, as to go any further, we would have had to have broken the toothpicks into sections.  But, it was easy enough to see, as far as we had gone, that our shape could continue increasing in perimeter - theoretically on into infinity, by continuing to divide the sides into thirds, and adding triangles onto them, without ever moving any closer to the edge of tablecloth.  Just for good measure though, we also watched a video about the Koch snowflake from Khan Academy, to prove it to ourselves.

Koch snowflakes, finite infinity - just about as hard to grasp as God incarnate, but awesome all the same.

Summer Fun 2014 - Multi-Media Doodle Table

We often cover the table in paper for day long, open ended, doodling with crayons, or colored pencils.  Just for a change, yesterday, I added a few more mediums to the mix.

First I covered the table with a plastic backed, disposable, paper tablecloth.  Then, I marked off a bunch of cattywampus squares with painter's tape.  Finally, I dug through the craft closet, and pulled out tempera paints, water colors, pastel chalk, markers, and our usual crayons, and colored pencils.

I told the girls, that within each shape they were free to draw, or paint whatever they wanted, whether it was a picture, a series of pictures, shapes, or just color - but they could only use one medium in each marked off space.  So, if they wanted to switch from water colors to tempera paint for instance, they needed to move to a different space.

They had a great time experimenting with each medium, working away, circling the table for more than an hour.  In fact, given enough time, I'm fairly certain there would not have been a blank inch left to be seen.

The only things I might do differently next time, would be to cover the table with butcher's paper, instead of a paper table cloth, to work better with wet paints, and I might set out a greater variety of paints in lieu of the largely ignored crayons, and colored pencils.  It's more fun to experiment with a medium you don't use everyday.

Tablecloth Play Mat - Simple Summer.

I found myself with ten children to entertain, yesterday - my youngest four, four visitors from Oregon (here along with their parents, the adult supervision, and leadership for the youth group combining with ours, this week), and two of A's friends (11 year olds) thrown in just for fun.

Luckily, I'd seen a great idea for a do-it-yourself play mat, over at All For the Boys, that combined nicely with the color-your-own tablecloth concept we've had fun with at birthday parties in the past, and was super easy to set up.

All I had to do was cover the table with a few pieces of butcher's paper, paper side up, tossed out a few toys - dinosaurs, soldiers, cars, penguins, and the like - whatever I could snatch with ease on a pass through of the children's rooms, with an assortment of washable markers, and crayons.

To get things going, I drew a quick, winding road around the toys.  The children took it from there...

...keeping them (especially the youngest few I was most worried about) busy, happy, and amazingly quite clear through lunch...



...and giving me time to slip out to prepare for the afternoon's entertainment.

It's great to be a homeschooler.