Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Zombie signing off...

Happy summer everyone! We have reached the end. My door now says "1 day left". It feels like forever ago that I made this door decoration. Truly, it feels like another lifetime. Or maybe I've aged over a year in three weeks.

At any rate, I'm going to take a break from blogging for a while to allow my brain and heart to finally process the loss of my sister; something I've yet had a chance to really do. It's easy to be in denial when you have a zillion things to do. But I just finished them. One more day of partying at Valley Fair, and it's "adios" to students and school for the summer. 

Before I go, I did promise and update on the tetrahedron project. And here it is. We made it!!! Starting from the first Stage 2, created by my buddy Gus, which inspired a whole heap of students to want to jump on board. We read a good chunk of the book, we cut and folded and taped and glued and assembled... and covered the desks and carpet in sticky hot glue wads in the process. Oh well. It was FUN! And it looks amazing. 




Here was the original, complete with themes from the book on each Stage 1 set of mini-tetrahedrons. It took a month of complete the book, figure out the concept, and buy a hot glue gun to construct, but it finally got done!










A cute little baby Stage 1 tetrahedron. We made lots and lots and lots of these.









Stage 2 tetrahedron. (4 to the 2nd power = 16 tetrahedrons) These required more patience and more hands and a much bigger mess of glue to clean up.








Stage 3 tetrahedron. (4 to the 3rd power = 64 tetrahedrons) We were pretty proud of ourselves when we got one of these made. And then we realized we had to make 4 more of those to get to a Stage 4. You can see how the project starts to snowball really quickly and there becomes a problem of storing them all... seeing as they double in height with each new level...





And now, it's time to lay the groundwork for the Stage 4 tetrahedron! The culmination of 3 weeks' and 30 students' effort... 4 to the 4th power = 256 tetrahedrons! Holy Hannah...









Now, don't MOVE for at least 60 seconds...











Viola! Stage 4 Tetrahedron! We rock.










Now let's be really cool and hang it inverted from the ceiling.  And then pretend we're super strong and holding it up with one finger.








And then lay on the floor and look at it from underneath.






And then sign off for the summer, with the afternoon sun rays catching the faces just right to make it look like an optical illusion. So proud of my 7th graders. I will miss you this summer! Come back and visit!

-Zombie out.