This past Sunday, Austin’s museums opened their doors for Museum Day, inviting the community to explore, discover, and experience something new. We participated at both the Bullock Texas State History Museum and the Neil Cochran House.

At the Bullock Texas State History Museum, visitors could dive into several of our favorite hands-on activities, including 21st Century Pattern Blocks, Bubble Tiles, Geometiles, and navigation activities and tools. Each offered a different way to play with mathematical ideas including patterns and geometry, spatial thinking, structure, and navigation.

We also brought Geometiles to the Neill-Cochran House Museum, giving visitors another opportunity to discover different ways to play and build with the geometric shapes. 

One of the things we love about events like Museum Day is the opportunity to show that mathematics doesn’t have to look like a worksheet or a classroom lesson. It can be something you build, touch, move, question, and play with. A museum is the perfect setting for that kind of exploration. Surrounded by history, art, architecture, and stories, visitors can encounter mathematics from entirely new perspectives.

Whether you were building a geometric structure, experimenting with patterns, exploring bubble tiles, or figuring out how to navigate from one place to another, there was plenty of math to discover in Austin this Museum Day.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by to play, explore, and experience math with us. We’re always excited to bring hands-on mathematics into the community!