Koch Tortilla Snowflake Snack

After our snow fun (as brief as it was) yesterday, making cinnamon and sugar tortilla snowflakes, for an evening snack, seemed like a natural choice. I decided to give our snowflakes a little extra math twist, by using a Koch snowflake design (another one of those fabulous, infinity bound in a finite space, fractals).

D (age 8) made the comment, while we were observing snowflakes, that their six sided designs do not fit into the Fibonacci sequence, suggesting that maybe the Fibonacci sequence is not as prevalent in nature as people like to think. He was actually jumping ahead of me, into a lesson I had hoped to share with the children using the latest series of video doodlings from Vi Hart, "Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant".

If you click the link, be warned, the Man of the House reacted to Vi Hart's fast paced banter in a manner usually reserved for Anne of Green Gables, but the children were mesmerized, inspired and entertained.

As to the tortilla, I spread it with butter and granulated sugar, on top of a greased cookie sheet, as normal...


...but before sprinkling on the cinnamon, I centered a Koch snowflake design, cut from paper, in the middle of the tortilla. There are a number of print and cut patterns for the snowflake online. My printer is still on the fritz, so I just sketched one out myself, using a 6in x 6in triangle, and its corners for a template (it was either sit sketch triangles, or go fold the laundry, so it didn't seem like much of a chore).


Then, I gave the tortilla a generous dusting of cinnamon...


...removed the paper...


...baked the tortilla in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes, and backed up a page on Vi Hart's blog, to start our snack time off with a "Triangle Party", which ends very conveniently for me, with a Koch snowflake.


It's great to be a homeschooler.