You Spin Me Round Rotations!

Rotations art...because there has to be art at the end of everything in my classroom! If you missed the other transformations, you can find translations here, reflections here, and the end of the transformations unit activity here. My kids had a blast doing this activity but complained about hand cramps from tracing! It is an easy activity that only requires paper and pencil!

I made a circle template and went ahead and cut them out to save time. I cut the template in pie pieces and only gave the pie to the kids to start with. You can see it stapled on top in the photo above. It is big to make them draw something SIMPLE! Remind them they will be tracing their design many times! I found that if the design was too detailed the sweet little middle schoolers would cheat and just try to draw it! Shocking! You can easily check it with their original pie piece. I had to keep emphasizing that it is a rotation so it should be congruent, not free hand.

 

 

After you have drawn your design on the pie piece, you need to create the "ink" to trace the design around the circle. To do this, you just scribble scrabble all over the back of the pie piece. It is best to use a wooden pencil, not mechanical. This may have to be repeated as you rotate around the circle.



 

After your "ink" is on the back, flip the pie piece over and trace your design onto the circle.

  

 

Continue rotating around the circle tracing the design and re-inking as necessary. This is the part where the whining started about hand cramps!



 

 

Once you have traced around the entire circle, color! The kids loved their final products!



 

This activity could be extended to include the unit circle if you teach older kids. It was the perfect activity to finish rotations in my classroom!