Story: Taking a moment to breathe in the fresh air, Harold noticed that beautiful flowers had popped up all over the enchanted garden. He would love for you to add your own flowers to the garden! The garden is not only enchanted, it is also symmetrical! Take a look at these two flowers. One is symmetrical and the other is not. What makes a flower symmetrical? Grab a sheet and use the pattern blocks to build symmetrical flowers for the garden!

Inspired by Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson; HarperCollins, 1998

Suggested manipulatives: Pattern blocks, Pentablocks, Unifix cubes, small mirrors (if available). For younger children, you may want to use die-cut pattern block shapes for students to glue onto their design documentation.

Prep time: 5 minutes to gather blocks, mirrors (if available) and 20 minutes if you are going to make die cut shapes for gluing.

Classroom time: Asking children to do their best work for each Math Vitamin assumes that some children will need a longer time than others. Ideally you want to offer a block of time for Math Vitamin projects and have another task available (writing, free exploration etc.) for those students who finish work prior to their peers. For this project allow 20-45 minutes for students to work through all the steps.

How to individualize/stretch: For students who are just beginning to “see” symmetry, give them four blocks (two yellow hexagons and two blue parallelograms, for example) and ask them to make a design that looks the same on both sides. Watch to see how they interpret this and have them check with friends to see if friends agree that their design is symmetrical. Have them build a few more examples, progressively using more blocks with different shapes. For those students needing a stretch, ask them to create shapes with horizontal and vertical symmetry. Additional stretches could involve rotational symmetry as well.