I did this really cool project in high school that I wanted to share with my kids.

We built rhombicosidodecahedrons.

It's not super mathematical and I probably need to do some kind of reflection or mathematical questioning but for now, we just enjoyed making something pretty.

I don't know how familiar you are with these but they are made out of 12 pentagons, 20 triangles, and 30 squares. Here are the templates.

The project starts with a lot of tracing and cutting. We used poster board but card stock works just as well. It's important to cut the little notches in each shape so that they can be folded. Fold up each edge to create a little tab. The tabs are then stapled to the tabs of another shape in a pattern.

Start with a pentagon and staple five squares on to each side of the pentagon. Then staple a triangle between each pair of squares. Now the pattern is that you only staple squares onto pentagons and triangles onto squares.

I don't have very good directions to give but this website helped a lot (scroll a lot), even though this guy did it differently and loves cats, it's still helpful to look at the pattern.

I should have taken pictures along the way to explain it better. But I didn't. 



  1. I am going to have to practice the pronunciation of these before bringing the project into the classroom! Thanks so much for posting the picture of the final product. I think I might try this out with my middle school math class towards the end of the year when crafting would settle them down a bit. How big was the final creation?

  2. Were the students able to finish in one class period? Also, did you have them "score" the tabs like the website instructed or did you just have them fold?

    1. It definitely can't be finished in one class period. Maybe 3-4 if they work quickly.

      We traced and cut and folded tabs. No scoring.