Summertime: Math Playtime with Desmos Art Project

Children learn so much and are so engaged in learning when they have time to play, experiment and fail.  Yes...failure is a part of the learning process, a challenging concept for many parents grounded in the "my-child-is-better-than-your-child" culture.  But without time to play, experiment and fail, I would not have learned the following items: HTML (which helps with writing this blog), embroidery stitches (learning chain stitches prior to YouTube can be challenging), and how to use Audacity to create audio files from the video files for the Global Math Department podcasts. Given time to experiment and play, there is much to be learned!

Image from needlenthread.com

As a high school math teacher for over twenty-five years, parents would sometimes ask me, "What should my child do over the summer? Khan Academy? A specific workbook? Take a test prep course? Enroll in a math class so they can AP Calculus and not fall behind their peers?"  I would often turn the question back on them and ask, "What is your child interested in doing this summer?"  Often this led to a discussion of what colleges or majors the parents wanted for their 15-year-old child, without the child being present for the conversation.

In each of these conversations with parents, I wanted to respond, "Give your child time to play, experiment and fail this summer. Ask them what they would like to try to learn and encourage them to share their failures and successes with you."  Of course, parents still crave some sort of structure and want their children to continue to do some math over the summer.  If you are a parent looking for this structure or you are a high school teacher that has been told to give a "summer math assignment", you can give an this optional creative task of "Desmos Art Project (Summer 2021)."  A special thank you to Julie Reulbach for initially creating a version of this Activity Builder for easy curation of the student art projects and to Javier Cabezas for creating the modifying colors screen in the activity.

Note to parents and teachers new to Desmos: You will need to create a free account at desmos.com to see the activity and then "assign" the activity to your child or students. Click on the triangle to the right of the "Assign" button to create a "Single Session Code". Click on "Create Invitation Code" and "View Dashboard". Then, you can copy the code to give to your child or students.

For examples of art projects from the most recent Desmos art contest, go to https://www.desmos.com/art and encourage your child or students to submit their work in any future Desmos art contests.