Mrs. Hanford's 4th grade class is making snowflakes. They do so by folding 8.5 by 11 inch pieces of paper and cutting to make an 8.5 by 8.5 square.
After folding it in half twice more, each student cuts shapes out of the sides and unfolds it to see what their snowflake looks like.
Unfortunately, as one student pointed out, real snowflakes are six-sided, not four-sided.

Is there a way to fold a piece of 8.5 by 11 inch (or you can use cm if you want) to make a six-sided snowflake?
If there is, the simpler the better. After all, it is a 4th grade class.
You only have a pair of scissors and your folding ability at your disposal.

I spent a few hours today brushing up on my trigonometry trying to offer up a solution better suited for fourth-graders than the one that Erik O. proposed. The difficulty with his solution is that it's takes a bit of knack to meet both edges along both folds without some degree of error; I can't see a fourth-grader easily achieving this feat. I think that the best solution would involve the teacher tracing all the folds on a sheet of paper to be photocopied and distributed to each of the students.

Moreover, to make your 'classic' 6-pointed symetrical snowflake, the paper has to be folded over once more so that there are 12 layers getting cut by each cut. A fouth-grader cannot cut printer paper, let alone construction paper, with those dull safety scissors. Tissue paper might be a good alternative in this case.

Posted by Charley on 2005-05-20 20:29:54