Give students an 8 1/2-by-11-inch piece of white paper. Instruct them to fold it in half along the longer end and set it with the opening facing down. Ask them to find the mid point at the top of the fold with a ruler and draw an equilateral triangle from that point with the open end as the base. Students should fold the flaps outside the triangle at 60-degree angles, then make a curved cut on the open end so the remainder resembles a slice of pizza. Students can then cut the remaining figure out any way they like to make a six-point paper snowflake.
Ask your class to get out the snowflakes they made in the previous lesson and have them trace it on a piece of paper. After, they will find and label eight to 10 different examples of geometric terms that you have studied. For example, a student could label the angle between two adjacent arms of his snowflake as an acute angle, because it is less than 90 degrees. Students should not use the same part of the snowflake for more than one definition, even if it is an example of more than one geometric term.
Although many people think that a haiku is simply a poem with three lines that have a syllable pattern of 5-7-5, traditional Japanese haiku always included a word that indicated the season, called a "kigo." These words didn't directly name the season, but hinted at it subtly, such as the croaking of frogs, which is a common sound during summer in Japan. For this activity, have students write a haiku using "snowflake" as the season word, and if time permits, include an illustration.
Nearly everyone has seen, whether firsthand or on a screen, a scene of thousands of snowflakes falling to the ground. Pose this question to students: If a snowflake and a raindrop have the same mass and fall from the same height, which would hit the ground first? Split students into groups of four and have them write a one-paragraph hypothesis. After, ask groups to share their answers. Explain that the raindrop would hit first, because the snowflake's mass is spread out across a wider area, creating more friction with the air and slowing it down.