Snowflake Squares

Take a large sheet of squared paper (half cm squares work well)

Colour in a square which is near to the centre of the paper with a red crayon

Repeat the following instructions:

Colour in blue all the squares touching a red square along one side only;
Colour in yellow all the squares touching a blue square along one side only;
Colour in red all the squares touching a yellow square along one side only;

Keep repeating these three instructions until you run out of paper!

If you would prefer to do this activity online where each stage is checked by the computer, try Fractal Mosaic. The fractal-like shape produces is not really a snowflake as snowflakes usually have six arms. If it's rotational symmetry of order six you would like to see try the Snowflake Generator.

Mrs A Doherty, Manchester

Monday, February 12, 2007

"I used this activity to help the students follow instruction. I read out the instructions for the small group of students. Each student had his or her paper covered up (like battleships) it was surprising what came out of it. The whole exercise lasted about 10 minutes...I didn't do the end....we adapted it to suit our time limit! Will repeat this one with a different pattern next time!"

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