Workshops at Lander Wyoming

I just finished a four day residency in Lander Wyoming from March 4^th through the 7^th 2013.  I think this is the third year I have been there. 

The first day I worked with the Middle School Art students with one and two point perspective. I use a grid system which makes learning perspective much easier.  Most teachers switch to this system of teaching perspective once they see it.  I also spent a couple of periods with the six grade art students going through some of my basic drawing techniques.  My attitude with this is nothing can be too simple.  What is a line?   How do you draw cubes, cylinders and spheres?   As I tell them, if you can draw these three things you can draw about everything in the Universe.  I carry this over into landscapes.   The last two hour period of the day I worked with the Pathfinders High School with magnetic sticks and steel balls to build three dimensional polyhedron and also had time to give them a small ball to draw their own geometric designs on.   It was the first time I have been able to mix these two workshops together at one time.   It worked very well studying the polyhedron first and using that knowledge to make their own cool designs.  I think most of their designed balls will be hanging in a very special spot in the rooms.  This knowledge will pop up again in chemistry, biology, architecture, geometry and art in their futures.

The second day I worked with 149 math students at Lander High School.  I showed them how to create the five Platonic Solids on a sphere after they had experimented with drawing geometric designs in triangles, squares and pentagons.   They selected one of their own designs to repeat into the         polygons of the polyhedron.   Using permanent black pens and later colored permanent pens they created their own personal designed sphere.   What is the most exciting about this assignment is none of the designs are the same and most    students are very surprised how their designs turn out when repeated in the twenty triangles of the icosahedrons or twelve pentagons of the dodecahedron or six squares of the hexahedron or cube.  By playing this way they see how many of the other polyhedra were discovered.  Some students who struggle with school do very well with this type of spatial thinking.

The third day I worked with sixth grade math students.   We also did the designed sphere idea but I held it to the octahedron and the cube so it wouldn’t be quite so complicated.  They still came up with some great sphere designs.   I hear the comment, “I wish math class were like this all the time, it would be a lot more fun”.

The fourth day I worked at Baldwin Creek Elementary with fifth grade students.  I used Magz or the magnetic sticks and balls with these students.   I have a whole suitcase full of them so there are enough for 30 students to create up to 20 different polyhedron with them in an hour.   They also experience what one polyhedron stacking with itself looks like in a chain.  This workshop teaches them that out of these fundamental five polyhedron plus some curved shapes everything in the universe can be constructed.    The students really like this workshop and learn a lot whether they know it or not.    I love the ah-ha moments like when you stellate or add points from the center of the face of an octahedron and it turns into a cube and you point that out to students, they say “ah-ha!”   I love that moment.