Getting to know the teachers and the school I found out that the Mathematics Curriculum in Uganda is not very different from the one in Australia. I was free to select topics to be taught over four weeks with two double-hour blocks per week that would fit into curriculum in year 5, 6, and 7, I decide to talk about tessellations and platonic solids.

Here the kids are working in groups to find different tessellations of the plane using equilateral triangles and squares. After discussing angles of regular polygons they could understand that there are only a small number of tessellations using regular polygons only, including the three regular tilings of the plane by equilateral triangles, squares, and regular hexagons.

Motivated by the soccer ball that is made from regular pentagons and regular hexagons we finished the lessons by building the platonic solids, and I was impressed that some of the groups managed to build all five of them given the form of the net in a single double hour. The kids were highly motivated and it was a great experience teaching them. The only thing they liked more than the mathematics was asking questions about Australia…

The Grace Care Children Programme is much older than this blog. Here is a previous blog which tells the story of building the new toilet block for the school.