Primary students are learning about symmetry and recognizing it in the world around them. We looked at the book Seeing Symmetry to help their understanding.
We first focused our study on butterflies. Students were shown how to fold their papers on the line of symmetry and apply paint to only one side of the line. Through the magic of symmetry the paint jumps to the other side when the paper is folded and rubbed. 1,2,3,Symmetry! Great fun! We also reviewed concepts of color mixing in this project.
During the next class period, students viewed a Power Point of numerous images and were asked to find the lines of symmetry. Some objects had vertical, horizontal, or numerous lines of symmetry, while some examples were not symmetrical at all! They really enjoyed this challenge! After the review, students created a leaf using the same symmetrical painting process. Both the leaf and butterfly will be cut and assembled together.