Abstract:

We want to illustrate a vertical STEAM project, hold in the Italian School, “C. Gallazzi” and "B. Pascal" in Busto Arsizio. The project includes classes of any levels from kindergarten to high school and was designed involving the teachers of each class.

The idea is to make mathematical subjects more tangible and inclusive using origami and to show the beauty of mathematics inserting an artistic perspective.

For this purpose, we choose, for each class, an artwork of a famous artist and we invite students to reproduce some special elements of the painting using origami models. During the folding process we develop math lessons on a specific math topic. Once the models are folded, students cover part of the painting gluing them on it. This gives a 3D perspective of the painting. All the artwork will take part of an exhibition at the end of the scholastic year; even more the exhibition is interactive in the sense that we propose to the visitors to fold models they see on the paintings.

In this paper, we want to describe the specific activities designed for the “Olive Tree with yellow Sky and Sun” by Van Gogh, developed with children of the last year of primary school (11 years old). In particular, we fold:
1) a modular tree (model by M.L. Spreafico) to cover the tree, proposing a lesson about natural numbers powers. In fact, this tree is useful to introduce easily powers of two and the concept of 2^0 ;
2) Sonobe modules (traditional origami module) to cover the sky, used as the starting point for a lesson about area and volume. We propose to compare the areas of figures appearing during the folding process and finally, we join the modules to form the classical Sonobe cube, remarking math² properties of total surface and volume;
3) a magic circle model (traditional origami model) to cover the sun, illustrating the concept of apothem and the problem of circumference approximation. The magic circle is a modular origami model having the apothem well represented by a fold in each module. The rectification of the sun allows to discuss the length of the circumference.

Keywords:

STEAM, Mathematics, Origami, arts.