Barn Quilts

I decided to transition out of origami birds and butterflies and into more geometric concepts in art: Quilts! I googled the American folk tradition of barn quilt painting back in the early 1800s and found a great lesson for rotational symmetry!  

Enter 2nd-4th grade. I reviewed diagonal folding and how to split shapes to find other shapes! Ex: split a square diagonally and find a triangle, rotate a square 45 degrees and find a diamond...We played with folding our papers so that our square sheets always came to perfect rotational symmetry at all 4 corners.  Next we learned about lines and points. Wherever a line ends or intersects another we find points! They connected their points and selected 3 colors of any dry material to create these:

Next week I'm going to have them split a square on several colored sheets and make a quilt block collage! Stay tuned...