Learn how to make tessellations from an online tutorial at CoolMath. This tutorial uses colorful graphics to explain the rules for making tessellations and then illustrate the rules in action using various polygons. CoolMath also provides free tessellation coloring pages to print and experiment with different colors and patterns of tessellations. Print out several copies of the same tessellation coloring page. Then color them in with different color combinations to see the behaviors of different shapes and patterns. Learn to make your own tessellations at Tessellations.org, where you can practice the rules learned at CoolMath about vertexes and how tessellations work by making your own oddly shaped polygons and tessellating them.
Learn more about tessellations from Shodor, which offers a Tessellate! generator where students can choose the number of sides and corners, as well as the color of shapes to tessellate, but also offers a Learner and an Instructor section with clear instructions and further resources. Shodor also has a Floor Tiles game which allows players to tessellate squares, along with Learner instructions. Shodor also has a Tessellations in the World page which gets readers thinking about examples of tessellations in the world around them, such as in pineapples or honeycombs. Students are encouraged to go on a tessellations scavenger hunt, looking for tessellations in the world around them, to further their understanding of the uses of tessellations in nature and society.
Practice and experiment with tessellations with an interactive game at the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. Choose from squares, triangles, circles, hexagons and octagons while choosing from 7 colors to apply to the shapes, and tessellate on a virtual screen. MathCats hosts Tessellation Town which allows players to tessellate an assortment of objects, such as trees, houses, floors, fish, seaweed, people, animals and flowers by dragging the objects into tessellations online. There is also a lesson on how to make your own oddly shaped tessellations and some Escher art tessellations to experiment with as well.
Make your own tessellating shapes or print and cut out shapes provided with tessellation instructions from the National Security Agency's Academia website. This pdf worksheet can be printed out and used to play tessellation games, in addition to other spacial games such as tangrams. Put together a tessellation jigsaw puzzle online in under two minutes at SurfNetKids. Learn more about tessellations from Dover Publishing's book, "Mosaic and Tessellated Patterns: How to Create Them, with 32 Plates to Color." This book explains the history of tessellations and what they are, then explains how to create them and offers 32 full-page examples of tessellations which can be colored in with markers, crayons or paints.