Making Bookmark Two
Start with a piece of boxboard 9cm X 24cm. Time for a quick engineering review! Let's calculate the perimeter and area of your boxboard rectangle. First, draw a clear sketch of your shape. Be sure to include extension lines and dimension lines to label your measurements. Remember your handy math formulas! For perimeter, use (P = 2 X L + 2 X W). For area, use (A = L X W). Keeping your math accurate ensures your project will be perfect!
Center and reverse tape your blueprint onto the boxboard exactly the same way you did Bookmark One.
Center and reverse tape your blueprint onto the boxboard exactly the same way you did Bookmark One.
Now it’s time to transfer your plan to the boxboard. Use your black pencil for the straight top and bottom lines of your drawing. These straight lines show where the straight walls of your project will be.
Because black is nice and dark, it stands out perfectly against the square centimeter grid. This makes it super easy for you to see the main straight shape of your project and know exactly where the straight parts start and stop.
Use your red pencil for the cross-marks and a blue pencil crayon for the curved semi-circles at the ends. The red cross-marks look like targets, and they show you exactly where to place your circle template so your curves come out perfect.
The bright red color acts like a warning sign for your brain, reminding you that these specific areas require three alignment points to be smooth, rounded turns instead of straight lines.
Using three different colors is just like using a map for your project. If every single line was the same color, it would be very easy to get confused and accidentally cut, align or fold the wrong part.
The black lines tell you to "go straight," while the blue lines tell you to "get ready to turn." Following this color guide helps you avoid mistakes so your boxboard project comes together perfectly.
Because black is nice and dark, it stands out perfectly against the square centimeter grid. This makes it super easy for you to see the main straight shape of your project and know exactly where the straight parts start and stop.
Use your red pencil for the cross-marks and a blue pencil crayon for the curved semi-circles at the ends. The red cross-marks look like targets, and they show you exactly where to place your circle template so your curves come out perfect.
The bright red color acts like a warning sign for your brain, reminding you that these specific areas require three alignment points to be smooth, rounded turns instead of straight lines.
Using three different colors is just like using a map for your project. If every single line was the same color, it would be very easy to get confused and accidentally cut, align or fold the wrong part.
The black lines tell you to "go straight," while the blue lines tell you to "get ready to turn." Following this color guide helps you avoid mistakes so your boxboard project comes together perfectly.
Carefully remove your blueprint.
Carefully join the black and red center lines
Using a circle template or guide draw the blue semi-circles. Don't forget the black broken folding line.
Stop!
Time to Practise
Time to Practise
As we get ready to finish our beautiful semi-circle bookmark, we are going to pause and take an important step in MST (Materials, Science, and Technology).
Before you pick up your scissors to cut the cereal boxboard that you spent so much time carefully designing, you are going to practice. Place a small coffee can lid, on a scrap piece of paper and using a dull pencil, trace around then lid. Cut the circle carefully. When you are confident with cutting a circle on paper try a piece of scrap boxboard.
Practicing your skills on trial materials is a core part of what engineers, designers, and scientists do every single day in MST. While you have already mastered cutting straight lines, cutting a curved line is a completely different junior artisan skill.
When you cut a curve, your hands have to work together in a new way: one hand opens and closes the scissors while your other hand slowly rotates the material. Testing this technique on scrap paper teaches you how to guide the blades smoothly, while testing it on thicker, tougher boxboard helps your hand muscles adjust to the resistance of the thicker material.
The biggest reason we practice on scrap materials is to protect your hard work! In the world of technology and design skills, we call this creating a prototype or a test run. If your scissors slip or you cut too deeply into a piece of scrap board, it is a fantastic learning moment because it didn't ruin your beautiful, final design. If you are not successful with the first one, keep trying!
By practicing first, you build the muscle memory and confidence you need to make your final bookmark look sharp, clean, and exactly how you imagined it
Before you pick up your scissors to cut the cereal boxboard that you spent so much time carefully designing, you are going to practice. Place a small coffee can lid, on a scrap piece of paper and using a dull pencil, trace around then lid. Cut the circle carefully. When you are confident with cutting a circle on paper try a piece of scrap boxboard.
Practicing your skills on trial materials is a core part of what engineers, designers, and scientists do every single day in MST. While you have already mastered cutting straight lines, cutting a curved line is a completely different junior artisan skill.
When you cut a curve, your hands have to work together in a new way: one hand opens and closes the scissors while your other hand slowly rotates the material. Testing this technique on scrap paper teaches you how to guide the blades smoothly, while testing it on thicker, tougher boxboard helps your hand muscles adjust to the resistance of the thicker material.
The biggest reason we practice on scrap materials is to protect your hard work! In the world of technology and design skills, we call this creating a prototype or a test run. If your scissors slip or you cut too deeply into a piece of scrap board, it is a fantastic learning moment because it didn't ruin your beautiful, final design. If you are not successful with the first one, keep trying!
By practicing first, you build the muscle memory and confidence you need to make your final bookmark look sharp, clean, and exactly how you imagined it
Pause and take an important step!
Graphic Design
Today, we are going to add an important graphic design to the surface of our semi-circle bookmark we have completed.
For your bookmark, graphic design means choosing the perfect colors, patterns, and words to make it look awesome, fun, and useful to use.
It is where your art and MST skills team up to turn a plain piece of paper into a creative masterpiece! Graphic design is the art of planning and creating visual ideas to send a message, in this case a math message to our brain.
For your bookmark, graphic design means choosing the perfect colors, patterns, and words to make it look awesome, fun, and useful to use.
It is where your art and MST skills team up to turn a plain piece of paper into a creative masterpiece! Graphic design is the art of planning and creating visual ideas to send a message, in this case a math message to our brain.
Using a letter or number template is a great graphic design exercise because it teaches you how to work within a boundary, just like real engineers and designers do. Instead of starting with a blank page, the template gives you a specific shape to fill with your colors, lines, and patterns. It forces you to think creatively about spatial reasoning—how to balance empty space and design elements inside a fixed constraint—while still giving you total freedom to express your unique style! I made a slight modification to two of the above templates. I drilled two holes, one in the large and one in the middle template. I use these holes for periods and decimals.
I used the medium size template and a black pencil crayon to trace and fill in my number, 30, on one end of my bookmark. If I lost my bookmark in the classroom one of my students would find and return it.
Later, we will do some "bookmark math" to measure our creation. To get started, we need to learn a magical mathematical constant called pi (p), which is approximately 3.14.
You get pi every single time you divide a circle's perimeter (the outside line) by its diameter (the total width across the center). It is a special number that goes on forever without ever repeating, making it one of the most important tools in science and technology.
You might wonder why we should memorize numbers when we have Google or calculators. Think of your brain like a high-powered video game console. If the console has to load every single blade of grass from a disc every time your character moves, the game lags and slows down.
But if it saves the basic graphics in its fast internal memory, the gameplay runs lightning-fast. Memorizing core facts upgrades your brain's processing speed so your creativity never has to pause when you are designing and building cool projects.
Look closely at the sample bookmark to see how it was made. The letters combine a large "p" template with a small "i" template, topped with a custom dot so the word "pi" stays lowercase.
The digits 3.14 were drawn using the large template, featuring a bright red decimal point to make it stand out. Finally, a ruler was used to ink the clean lines of the mathematical symbol for pi (p).
Make sure to practice your lettering on scrap paper before working on your final bookmark.
You get pi every single time you divide a circle's perimeter (the outside line) by its diameter (the total width across the center). It is a special number that goes on forever without ever repeating, making it one of the most important tools in science and technology.
You might wonder why we should memorize numbers when we have Google or calculators. Think of your brain like a high-powered video game console. If the console has to load every single blade of grass from a disc every time your character moves, the game lags and slows down.
But if it saves the basic graphics in its fast internal memory, the gameplay runs lightning-fast. Memorizing core facts upgrades your brain's processing speed so your creativity never has to pause when you are designing and building cool projects.
Look closely at the sample bookmark to see how it was made. The letters combine a large "p" template with a small "i" template, topped with a custom dot so the word "pi" stays lowercase.
The digits 3.14 were drawn using the large template, featuring a bright red decimal point to make it stand out. Finally, a ruler was used to ink the clean lines of the mathematical symbol for pi (p).
Make sure to practice your lettering on scrap paper before working on your final bookmark.