After playing around with pentagons, Silas’ sixth birthday seemed like a good time to discover hexagons.

Our previous geometric introduction was so positive, having the shape revealed in the sea star, that I hoped to find a similar way to use nature to find our next geometric form. In one of my internet search rabbit holes, I read some fascinating facts about bubbles, including the fact that a bunch of bubbles that are uniform in size will always come together to make hexagons. But how to make this visible for a six-year-old?

I started with a clear box acrylic picture frame. On this particular frame, the corners weren’t sealed, so I ran a bead of hot glue in each one to make it water tight. Add some soapy water and a straw and not much instruction was needed.

Once we had a good tray of bubbles, we placed another flat piece of plexi on top of the tray, which served to flatten the bubbles into a wall.

A dry…