Make Symmetrical Snowflakes!

Whether you live in a cold winter climate or a balmy one, every kid knows what a snowflake is! This fun design activity, that combines art and math, will keep your fourth grader busy during those long winter months.

What You Need:

What You Do:

Ask your child what he already knows about snowflakes. The basic ideas you want to touch upon are: they usually have 6 stems, no two are alike, and they are symmetrical shapes.

Once you’ve covered these ideas, tell your child that you’re going to design snowflakes together. But the catch is that each of you will design half of the snowflake.

Step 3

Take a piece of construction paper and fold it in half. On one side of the paper draw half a snowflake design using three stems. For the first snowflake design keep it simple.

Give the half-completed snowflake design to your child. He now has the job of drawing the other half of it on the other side of the paper. He needs to make sure he replicates the design exactly as you drew it, so it will be a mirror image of the first side. This may require using the ruler to determine exactly how long each stem is, the distance between stems, etc...

When your child is done drawing his part of the snowflake, have him make sure it is indeed symmetrical by folding it in half and seeing if the opposite sides touch one another.

Keep doing this activity but each time you make half a snowflake, make the design a little more complicated.

When your child has the hang of it, have him now start the design and you can now finish it.

Step 8 After designing a bunch of snowflakes, you will now have a lot of great material to decorate your home in honor of winter!