Pencil holder (1)

During our autumn program, children made a pencil holder.  The main purpose was to get the children used to using a ruler. Children in this rural area don't seem to be used to measuring length with a ruler.  They use rulers to draw lines to ensure that sentences are written straight on blank paper, and also for drawing pictures.  For example, when drawing a house, they use a ruler to draw straight lines for the roof and walls. Personally, I'd prefer them to draw such pictures with freeform lines...

Children made pen holders with different shapes depending on their grade, either they were primary or secondary or high schoolers. The primary school students made pen holders with two triangular prisms (one long and one short) with diamond-shaped bases.  For grade 7 to 9, the  holder consists of 6 triangular prisms (2 types of lengths: 3 prisms are long and other 3 short) with a hexagonal base.  For grade 10 & 11, it consists of total 6 triangular prisms of 3 types of length: long, medium, and short, with a hexagonal base.  Each model has a different drawing, and the older the students are, the more lengths they should measure.

In addition to the drawings, the children will also be asked to measure and cut colored paper to decorate the outside of the pen holder.  So the purpose of this activity was to measure the length accurately and create an accurate shape. We hope that the completed pen holders will be useful for studying at home.

During the program, we also introduced the experience of using a compass and the concept of creating equilateral triangles and regular hexagons with a compass.  Just to be sure, we also reviewed how to use a protractor when drawing a triangle, but this time we used a compass.  For most of the children, it was their first time using a compass. In rural areas, there is often a lack of educational materials both at schools and among students themselves at home, so such experiences are often omitted from school curriculum.