This AWESOME idea came from Abby Schiferl on Twitter. She had her students design snowflakes using Google Drawings, which in itself is fun but she brought in her Silhouette machine and used it to cut out their designs (which I though was pretty cool). She works in a computer lab but this could easily translate into the classroom.
I reached out to her on Twitter and asked how they designed the snowflakes in Drawings and she sent me a link to a YouTube video they used as the inspiration for this project.
I tried designing it this morning (see picture above). It was fairly easy, although I had to restart it several times because I messed up the final closing of the shape. I would tell students that they will mess up...but to me that is part of the process.
Purposely I used my mouse track pad instead of an actual mouse to rate the difficulty level for students (who don't have external mouses) and it wasn't too bad. Definitely doable.
I loved the Silhouette aspect of being able to take home a tangible product they designed. I personally don't have a Silhouette or Cricut machine but I a meeting up with a teacher friend later today to have her cut out my design above. She has a personal machine but she bought one after using the schools Cricut machine (which would make a great grant proposal).
Making the snowflake didn't take that much time so you might want to have students make a few snowflakes and then pair it with this Google Slides animation idea (check out the comment about changing the size of the falling snow).
This would be a great activity to reinforce symmetry and angles.
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