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  • Activities and Competitions

    Organizing activities and competitions can be fun but there are times you need some fresh input. In the activity drop-down menu below, you can find heaps of ideas. What about a Paper Plane Competition?

  • Activities

  • TIP: Think inside the hat!

    Party hats, store-bought or made from pages of an old book or scrap paper are very useful for a display. You can staple the hat to the board as a container for whatever you want to showcase. Or hang them in front of the board filled with little notes, poems, toy animals or whatever takes your fancy

  • TIP: Staple at an angle

    Removing old display items will be much easier when you hold the stapler at an angle when you tack items to the board. The staples will stick out at one side - perfect to get hold of and pull them out when you change displays.

  • TIP: Use a glue gun

    Glue guns are the most fantastic tools for creating displays. You can attach all sorts of materials like hard plastic, metal, fabric and everything else you can think off. Be careful with your fingers (blow - blow) the glue is very hot and you easily get blisters

  • TIP: Create a 3D effect!

    Create a 3D effect by hanging objects in front of the display board, like fish in a Sea Life display or lanterns in a Spring or Garden display.

Mathematics: Juggling the Numbers

Posted on April 18th, 2019 by Anita

We may not realise it but everything in life is full of mathematics. Shapes, forms and sounds. Nature, time and space. Music, art and games. According to Wikipedia: Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, and change.

To create a display that covers all these areas would be way too much so I numbered (nice pun) it down to a straight construction with clear lines.
A couple of playful math books were helpful to get me started and as I was shelving an artbook on Escher’s mathematical drawings,  I got the idea for a reoccurring background. When flicking through a design magazine I discovered the bright yellow/black artwork of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Her work contains repetitive and reoccurring patterns and has an overwhelming amount of quantity and structure.
Creativity and mathematics don’t seem to go together but here you see it does!
                                         
The black and yellow colors for the background and black and white for title and images enhance the feeling of logic, rhythm, and pattern while the bright numbers add a playful touch. 
What you need: 
  • Create a plywood headboard and 4 thin plywood shelves (or ask your partner, uncle, neighbor). A jigsaw does a good job and is easy to handle.
  • 4 packages of bright colored plastic numbers
  • Collection of rulers, set squares. We used a number of lost items that students never asked for.
  • Large calculator
  • Compass
  • Thermometer
  • Black/yellow images ‘Dragon’ by Escher (used as background and printed on A3)
  • Black/yellow ‘Dots Obsession Day’ Images by Yayoi Kusama’s (used as background and printed on A3)
  • Escher’s image ‘Bird/Fish in black and white, enlarged and laminated
  • Escher’s image ‘waterfall’ enlarged and laminated
  • 2 x Puzzle images from Menza book, enlarged and laminated (or use a Sudoku)
  • Black letters for the title on a white background and laminated
  • Search Google – Images for the silhouette of juggling boy and girl, alternate if necessary and enlarge to the required size
  • Black card to make boy and girl
  • Black card to cover parts of headboard (optional) and to cover shelves
  • Black card to create a half-round banner
  • Yellow card used as background for boy and girl
  • 4 Half-round shelves of very thin plywood (or use cornflute)
  • Glue gun, blu tack, ruler, stapler, etc. to attach materials
What to do:
 
  • Cover the middle panel and the headboard in Escher’s yellow and black ‘Dragon’ A3 paper
  • Cover the left and right panel with ‘Dots Obsession Day’ printed on A3
  • Cover the shelves with black card and glue them in place with a glue gun. Attach shelves halfway to the left and right panel. To hold them up I used set squares and glued them in place with a glue gun.
  • Staple the black half round banner to the middle panel. Use the glue gun to attach the numbers
  • Glue the calculator, thermometer, and rulers etc. to the board. I use the black card as a background for the rulers otherwise they could hardly be seen.
  • If necessary cover up the iron beams left and right of the middle board. Use black card. Attach the boy and girl with blu tack. Make sure their hands are in line with the black banner.
  • Glue ‘falling’ numbers under the banner to the middle board.
  • Glue numbers on the top of the shelves
  • Staple Menza puzzles to left and right top panel (make sure it is in the middle)
  • Staple Escher’s ‘Fish/Bird’ and ‘Waterfall’ to left and right bottom panel (in line with top images)
  • Use the black card and a glue gun to cover the poles of the headboard (optional)
  • Staple title in a ‘juggling’ way to the headboard.
          
                                      

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