Week 4: Polyhedra Study

Leonardo da Vinci was a mathematician, inventor, and artist. His sketches in The Divine Proportion are a wonderful collection to study. Spatial awareness and being able to draw what we see are skills that can be mastered through practice.

This week, I encourage learners to sketch polyhedra from cubes to tetrahedra to dodecahedra. Use charcoal, pencils, or watercolors to create works of art. You can model with clay, paper, glue, and sticks, or build toys and then sketch. Play with various forms of lighting and shading. Move beyond the numbers this week and look for math in the objects/polyhedra around you.

You can combine this study with history and architecture. Go out and look for polyhedra around you. Can you make a pyramid scene? What is a soccer ball? What is the shading like at different times of day for a favorite building? Are there planes of symmetry for your sketch? How many vertices are there?