The Pythagorean Theorem

We are learning about the life of Pythagoras right now in the History of Mathematics and I just found a great lesson online which is based on helping students discover the Pythagorean theorem for themselves! The link is here; Tip 1 and Tip 5 are both on-computer activities but the other three tips use a template containing various geometric shapes which you can print out, cut up, and move things around to help you figure it out. I think it would be excellent for homeschoolers! I am personally really excited about this myself, since Math is NOT my strong suit and I want to stretch myself more in this direction. The templates and directions for using them alone are worth clicking on the link. But he also has a very nice section of follow-up problems that you could assign for independent work. And there's a good review section in the beginning that would be helpful to teachers or parents before beginning to teach this lesson. Remember, things on the Internet don't last forever and he posted this lesson in March of 2001, so if you think you will EVER teach the Pythagorean Theorem, I suggest you visit it. :-)