We chose the slide-togethers that we first met on George Hart's website a couple of years ago and had taken them to a Maths Camp in Biloela where we found that they were 'hard' but very interesting. You can still find the instructions for making these advanced models on Professor Hart's website:

http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/slide-togethers.html

Our concern was that the models on this site would be too demanding for the younger students and so we decided to look for ways of simplifying them. After some experimentation, we found that it is possible to make slide-togethers with much simpler construction skills than those needed by the George Hart models, and these are the ones that we used with the students.

The results were great. Everyone managed to complete the first model, and most managed at least three in the space of one hour and that included cutting and sliding and admiring! For us the best part was when some of the students started to experiment with the shapes that we had provided, find that they can be slid together in different ways to make a range of solid shapes - showing their natural curiosity and asking mathematical what-if questions.

As you can see, the above model is quite complicated, but we were able to make some simpler ones (like this one made from triangles that were based on the same principles, but which young students were well-able to construct.

You can click here to download the templates that we used, or, if you are feeling really adventurous, go to the George Hart website and have a go at some of his models.