Read a biography of M.C. Escher to familiarize students with his life and work. Explain that this artist is most known for his abstract art and tiled paintings called tessellations. Escher shunned flat designs and incorporated many imaginative 3D shapes and depth into his paintings. The images he painted were from his imagination instead of the real world. Show students several examples of Escher's tessellations.
Tessellations create a tiled pattern from symmetrical shapes and motifs that fit together to cover the entire surface of the work with no gaps. Show students several shapes, regular and irregular, and ask them to identify whether they are symmetrical or not. Review symmetry, if necessary, to help the students recognize symmetrical shapes. Give each student a piece of heavy paper and ask them to fold it in half. Have them draw one side of a shape along the fold and cut it out to make a symmetrical design.
Tiling a symmetrical shape is a matter of using geometric reflections, rotations and translations to create a repeating pattern across the surface of the paper or canvas. Start in the upper left-hand corner and trace the shape pattern you made. Flip and turn the shape until you find a way to fit the shape within itself in an interlocking puzzle pattern. Repeat the tiling and tracing pattern until your paper is completely covered.
A geometric tessellation is simply an interlocking pattern of simple geometric shapes. Once the tiling is done, the picture is completed. To turn a tessellation into an artistic masterpiece, instruct your students to study their shape patterns to find what they resemble or have them think up an artistic design to fill in. Color or paint each tiled shape in the same color and design so that the decoration repeats itself, just like the shape.