Christmas Math Projects: Geometric Ornaments

Thanksgiving break is over... we have three weeks of school until Christmas break... and I'm clearly not ready for the season, because I just noticed that I have a "Trick or Treat" candy dish on my desk. Oops. And I haven't set up my Memphis Tiger basketball Christmas tree on top of my file cabinet yet! At least I did one thing right: I started planning my Christmas math club activities! Here is one of the three projects that are in progress in kindergarten and first grade... I'll post the others when I have time this week!

Octahedron Ornaments!
This is a project that I do with my first grade math enrichment club. We talk about eight-sided shapes, things that have the prefix "octo," etc., and then we decorate eight-sided ornaments. I let them color their ornaments however they want--we get a lot of sports-themed ornaments! They cut the shape out, fold carefully on all the fold lines, and then I glue them together with my hot glue gun. I glue a loop of yarn to each one for hanging (glue the ends of the yarn on the inside of the ornament to make it look neater).

This is my sample ornament... no wonder all the kids make sports ornaments! It looks great on my Tigers tree though :)

Student ornament in progress.

Here is the template I use to make the ornaments:
Octahedron Ornament

Here are some of the adorable ornaments that my students made:

He made a basketball ornament... a child after my own heart :)

The photo doesn't show how precious this ornament is... each side has a picture of an angel, a nativity scene, or Jesus lying in a manger. SO sweet.

Tennessee Vols ornament... she didn't get the memo that only Memphis ornaments were acceptable. No, I'm just kidding, she did a great job!

Happy tree-trimming, everyone!