This problem solving activity has a geometry focus.
Use the half arrow shape as a starting block to produce your own wallpaper friezes. Put this shape into the grid to make a repeating pattern.
How many different repeating patterns can you make?
There is a great deal of mathematics in everyday objects. The patterns on walls are no exception and wallpaper friezes often utilise reflections, translations and rotations. Producing their own friezes gives students the opportunity to explore all of the basic transformations of 2D shapes.
There are three transformations:
Use the half arrow shape as a starting block to produce your own wallpaper friezes. Put this shape into the grid to make a repeating pattern.
How many different repeating patterns can you make?
You might try to find actual wallpaper friezes that match up with the patterns found in the problem.
Ask students to create their own pattern by cutting out a new shape from a rectangular piece of paper, that is the same size as one of the grid squares, and then repeating, reflecting, rotating, and shifting the shape around the grid.
There are 7 different wallpaper friezes that can be made using the basic block in the picture. They are listed here.
Note: Possible patterns such as:
have the same symmetry as one of the 7 listed. For instance 8 = 1 and 9 = 5.
Printed from https://meaningfulmaths.nt.edu.au/mmws/nz/resource/friezes at 8:55pm on the 26th February 2024