Making patterns out of tiles

For this activity you will need to print this PDF (or this PDF) and cut out the patterned tiles. You can print multiple copies of the PDF to have more tiles, and slightly thicker paper works well if you have some to hand. Place the tiles in a big square (4x4, 5x5 or 6x6), with all the tiles arranged in the same way. You will end up with something like this:



Now you can rotate the tiles in the square in a consistent way, following a set of rules. Here are some possible rules:

 • rotate every tile 90°,
 • rotate every other row 180°,
 • rotate every other column 90°,
 • rotate every other tile 90° in a chessboard pattern,
 • and so on.

If you don't get confused when re-arranging the tiles, you will create new symmetrical patterns again and again, like in the examples below:

   

You can see this in action in the following video :