Crazy 8s Club: Glow-in-the-Dark Geometry

Today the Gordon-Nash began a new outreach program with the New Hampton Community School’s After School Program. For the rest of the school year, I will be working Tuesday afternoons with a group of upper elementary students, assisted by Mr. McCann. Together we will be facilitating fun and innovative math activities as part of a library program funded by the Bedtime Math Foundation. This club is called The Crazy 8s Club!

Our problem-solving meeting today involved building plane and solid shapes using styrofoam balls and glowsticks in a darkened classroom. As we worked, we looked for patterns and made predictions about numbers of balls we'd need or had used. 

Then we worked together to make a glow-in-the-dark series of repeating regular polygons, in this case, hexagons.

One fourth grader said he never knew math could be so much fun!