Little House on the Prairie: Quilt Squares

Although the boys do like listening to the Little House series before bed, I sometimes have a problem finding activities that are not too-girlish for them to do related to them. They ask to do projects, but they sometimes don't like the possible choices. They didn't like the idea of sewing a quilt square, but they were happy to make quilt square patterns out of shapes (squares and triangles) of different sizes cut out of paper. Then it became an interesting puzzle for them, a little like tangrams.

We looked at some common quilt patterns, enjoyed hearing their names and making them with cut paper pieces.

 Here is an easy quilt square called Maryland Beauty.

 This is called T-Block, for obvious reasons.

 This one is called Old Maid.

 This one is called Broken Dishes.

 This one is called Mosaic.

This one is called Hourglass.

Then my student wanted to make one of his own.

He called it Impossible Picture.
I am going to make some more squares and triangles out of Christmas wrapping paper scraps and have them make some designs to glue down on paper.