Christopher Danielson’s Blog

Geometry

A 21st Century Challenge

After seeing Hana Murray's lovely study of rectangles made from 21st Century Pattern Blocks, I started playing and noticed that many of them seemed to involve the small green triangles. Pretty soon, I had formed a conjecture. Using copies of these at least two...

A rectangle made of 12 teal-colored kites, four pink right triangles, and four blue diamonds in an arrangement that has both horizontal and vertical lines of symmetry.
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21st Century Pattern Blocks Scaling Up

I am very excited to let folks know that Dan Finkel of Math for Love has scaled up 21st Century Pattern Blocks production and availability. They've been available here on this site for a few years now. At first I was making them on a maker-space laser cutter, then...

A large collection of colorful polygons, scattered on a white surface and brightly lit Looking almost like candy, there are pink right triangles, yellow hexagons, purple irregular hexagons, blue diamonds, red isosceles trapezoids, gray darts, and (best of all) teal kites. In the center of the image is the box these tiles come in, which reads "21st Century Pattern Blocks. Pattern Blocks for the Next Generation"
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Supporting Children’s Early Math Learning

I was invited recently to give a talk to Reach Out and Read Minnesota, a lovely organization that supports early literacy development by connecting with children and caregivers in medical offices. They are beginning to explore similar work for early math...

Black text on a white background. Children know and can do more math than their caregivers expect.