WoodenBooks

The “Wooden Books” is a series of beautifully illustrated books addressing various fields within art, mathematics, and science. I have an interest in Classical Education and first read “Quadrivium” from this series. It gave me historical and artistic information on mathematics and geometry that I made use of on my placement to enormous success in the Grade 9 geometry unit. I have also used them as supplementary material in my tutoring, again always to very positive response. Once student immediately went out and bought a set of them for herself. The information contained in these books gives not so much the utilitarian information that the curriculum is based on, but the historical-aesthetic context of the subject matter. Additionally, it generally draws upon a range of Middle Eastern and Asian sources besides those of the Middle Ages and Ancient World. The artistic material is particularly good for making geometry activities. For example, I used the chapter on tiling to easily make the following patterns on my computer from scratch. Each tile is actually made of four copies of a smaller tile, which have been rotated 0, 90, 180, or 270 degrees respectively in order to made a more complicated pattern. Of course, much more complicated patterns can be easily made from a single image with a little more planning.