Cool Flexagon Art: Creative Activities That Make Math & Science Fun for Kids! (Cool Art With Math & Science)

Discover secret math and science tricks to creating art! This title introduces young readers to the sciences, with a creative twist. Math and science educational pages are interspersed with cool flexagon activities that offer practical applications of the information students learn in class. All activities include how-to photos, easy instructions, and clear explanations. Reinforce Common Core Standards in reading, math, and science, while making cool art projects, from a transformer star to a 3-D flexagon. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards.Checkerboard Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

If origami swans aren’t cutting it any longer, expand your mind with the movable, geometrical designs presented in this entry in the Cool Art with Math & Science series. They’re called flexagons—“toys made of folded paper.” Though their status as “toy” is a bit questionable (it’s never clear what you’re supposed to do with these things), they are undeniably cool. Basically, flexagons are three-dimensional objects that have different numbers of hidden sides that, by “flexing” the paper, become revealed. Four projects are offered up, from the flat, square “hexa-tetra flexagon” to the shifting, expanding “transformer star.” Intro pages show each finished design and list the required materials and relevant terms, and then a two-page photo spread goes step-by-step through the process, which is depicted as clearly as possible given the page limit. Brief math and science interludes provide information on convex versus concave, number-related prefixes like hepta- and octa-, and 3-D geometry. Back matter includes a list of math terms. Time to enter the fold. Grades 4-6. --Daniel Kraus