Rubik's Cube Mosaic...Fun, Satisfying, and Great Teambuilder

Today my Problem Solving Class unpacked the 225 Rubik's Cubes shipped from http://www.youcandothecube.com/cube-mosaics/ and began the task of creating our school crest. Last week, a student used Photoshop to turn a picture of the crest into a mosaic, and after spending time adjusting some of the squares that did not turn out quite right, we were ready! I asked Diane from the company for a bit of help, and she immediately responded and helped me to figure out what to do. My class and I divided the mosaic into 25 sets of 9 cubes. Each student (9 altogether) were assigned 2 or 3 sets of the 9 cubes, and their task was to make the top face look like the one portion of the 9 cubes...so for example, if you remember the opening of the Brady Bunch, one student had to first figure out the face of "Marcia", then "Carol", and this continued till they did the whole group of 9...then they placed them on the butcher paper I had on the floor.

 Here is how we divided up students, and we looked at the original just to make sure we fet good about the colors.

It was pretty amazing to get 225 Rubik's cubes all solved...it was quite satisfying see them all! But we had to mess them up to get them to match the picture. 

We had no idea how long it would take. Our class is 1.5 hours long, and I definitely thought we would need at least two classes to complete our task. But about an hour in, I new we could do it...it started getting really exciting as we had only a handful of cubes left. We finished with about 10 minutes to spare!

We may do one more, depending if we can find a piece of student artwork that works well with the mosaic program. Next year, we will use 400 cubes to get an even more accurate design.

I think this project really promoted teamwork, collaboration, and grit. We talked about it for months, so finally doing it was very fulfilling for students.

I am working on writing up directions to solve the cube--it will not be directions to make you the fastest, but rather to make you remember how to solve it and show other students...I am collaborating with the teacher who skyped with me and taught my class and me how to solve a Rubik's Cube, Dan VDV. He was so patient and helpful, and I hope to do the same for the #MTBoS! I have written about how solving the cube helps to develop grit here.