Polyhedra

Yesterday, in my Math for Elementary Teachers class, there was a presentation on polyhedra. We were given five different Platonic solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron) and were asked to find the vertices, faces, and edges of each. Then, our assignment was to make paper models for other polyhedral figures. It turned out to be much more time consuming than I anticipated. It reminded me of paper origami. I chose to construct a pentagonale hexacontahedron, which turned out to look like a disco ball. I also made a compound of cube and octahedron, which looked like a cube with pyramids coming out of the sides. It would definitely be a good hands-on activity to do with both elementary and middle school students. You would have to choose more difficult ones for middle school students, of course. There is a websitewhere you can go and print off paper models to make your own polyhedra. I also found a neat website where you can click on different kinds of polyhedra and see them 3D.