Paper Sculpture

About a month and a half ago or so I wanted to try this lesson I got at the KAEA conference a few years ago when I was still a student.  I was intrigued about the cool designs and how paper could form such a sculpture that was visually interesting.  I thought my junior high kids would be able to figure it all out.

It is called interlocking polyhedrons.  I got the lesson and template from the conference along with a website that helped me a lot.  The website is: http://www.iqlight.com/. 
I enlarged the template and used the 12-piece model.  For some added fun, I allowed my students to paint their pieces however they wanted after they traced them all onto posterboard.
 
That was the easy part.  I did a practice piece of my own and had no problems but the pieces were smaller before I decided to have my students do theirs bigger.  I also used a slightly different paper.  These 2 small changes sure did make a difference when it came to assembly.  The students had a ton of fun with this project even though it was frustrating for some.  We all ended up working together to assemble them.  Some were better than others, so they were my assistants trying to help everyone out.  It was a great team effort.  Once they were all assembled they went into the display case in the front of the building for conferences.  I got a ton of compliments on how "COOL!" they were and "How did you do that?"  The students were proud of them because they looked really nice and were proud they could accomplish the challenge of the task.

If I do this again, I may have to test paper, size, and if paint affects how they assemble in order to make it easier.