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Light Learning Tessellations

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Add a numeracy dimension to light table play with these glittery, squishy animal shapes!To tessellate means to completely fill a flat space with the same, repeating shape without any gaps or overlap. We have created 5 animal shapes that fit snugly together and form exciting patterns. Elephant, dog, fish, bird, and lizard gel creatures each have their own special glitter shape inside!

The translucent gel and glitter make these critters a perfect addition to a light table or light cube!

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The squishy texture provides a quiet, non-distracting outlet for fidgety kids in classrooms. These gel animals are also fridge and freezer safe, so they can soothe incoming teeth, bruises and bumps!

Talk about symmetry! Challenge students to find rotational, reflectional or translational symmetry. Individual animals may not be symmetrical but tessellated shapes might be! Some tessellations might have more than one kind of symmetry. For example, individual lizards have reflectional symmetry, but five or six tessellated lizards have rotational and reflectional symmetry!

Older students will have fun tessellating these squishy animals, but very young children can be encouraged to create other patterns. Challenge them to organize the animals by color or make repeating patterns by type of animal.