I met Judy Chaffee at Escape from the Textbook community. She mentioned a polynomial quilt activity that was a hit with her students. This are materials for the activity, posted with Judy’s permission here since she does not have a blog yet – maybe one day!

Judy writes:

I start with showing them how regular multiplication looks (shape wise) using an array.  We discuss that when you multiply one digit by another, you get a rectangle and when you multiply one digit by itself you get a square.  We then look at how a variable looks when multiplied by itself a number.  Next they draw it on paper and then cut their scrapbook paper to match the sizes used in their drawing.

I just started quilting myself and I think this summer I will actually make a quilt using this idea.  Oh yeah, I start the lesson with talking about quilting and how some mathematicians are using quilting and math.  I’ve included my powerpoint for this part.

Here are a few of the quilts students made:

This is the summary Judy made for the students: