Back to Activity Guides : Get the Acrobat Version

#1-21656

Introduction

Congratulations on your new PuzzlingMoves purchase. You will find PuzzlingMoves creates an ever-changing fitness experience for your students, as well as a terrific problem-solving, communication and memorization activity. This guide is designed to help you and your students get the most from PuzzlingMoves.

Activities

See pages 3 and 4 of the PDF version for a variety of silhouettes for all the activities mentioned below. See pages 5 and 6 of the PDF version for their solutions.

Activity 1: Lay out all 7 of the geometrical pieces, show the students the silhouette, and allow them to all work together on a solution. When the students solve this shape, give them a new shape to solve.

Activity 2: The instructor creates a silhouette and has the entire group (12 to 15 kids) stand on the shape. The group is asked to travel from Point A (where they are now) to Point B which is 15 or 20 feet away, or even further. No one can touch the ground and the pieces can be used as �stepping stones.� Once the group gets to Point B, the original silhouette must be recreated maintaining the rule that no one can touch the ground.

Activity 3: Have the students create their own silhouettes and record the solutions, then give the silhouettes to another team to see if they can figure it out.

Activity 4: Provide one person with the answer key to a particular shape. This person attempts to communicate the desired silhouette and solution to a group of people working with the actual pieces.

Activity 5: Two sets of pieces are required for this activity. Create a design with the first set and place it behind a curtain attended by 3 people. Hand the second set of pieces to a group of up to 10 people. The objective is for the 3 people to tell the larger group on the other side of the curtain how to recreate the geometric silhouette. The 2 groups may only communicate verbally.

Gas Leak Activity

Note: The instructions below may be copied and passed on to students so they may have a better understanding of the activity while participating.

Scenario:
A freight train has just derailed in your community. Fortunately, no one was injured in the wreck. However, the train was carrying a large container of extremely hazardous gas, which the fire department found to be leaking. Engineers have sealed off the leak by placing a temporary �curtain� (rope) around the broken pieces of the tank. A quick and permanent fix is needed soon or the gas will leak out and cause great destruction. There are seven pieces to the broken gas container that, if placed in exactly the right way, will permanently seal the leak. The officials are stumped, and time is running out. Your team has been called in to solve the problem.

Note: For this activity you will need a piece of rope that is long enough to encircle all the pieces and still have plenty of room inside the circle for students to move around.

Objective:
Your team must seal the leak by placing the seven broken pieces of the gas container in an exact shape. The broken container pieces look very similar to PuzzlingMoves pieces.

Time Allotment:
The team is allowed ____ minutes starting from the moment the facilitator claps. The time allotment is for the instructor to determine. The instructor may experiment with different time allotments.

Guidelines:

1. All 7 geometric pieces must be used in the solution.

2. The pieces must form an exact duplicate of the supplied silhouette (instructor chooses one silhouette from this guide, see pages 3 and 4 in PDF version).

3. None of the pieces may overlap in the solution.

4. Each person on the team will be allowed one trip inside the roped off area. No one located outside of the roped off area may reach inside the roped off area.

5. Team members may only stay inside the roped off area for as long as they can hold their breath. The �gas� is very harmful to breathe.

6. The rope may not be moved, and the pieces must stay inside the roped off area.

7. Pieces may not be physically altered in any way.