Rotations, Translations, and Reflections!

I won't even lie. When I was younger, and learning about translations, rotations, and reflections; I never ever understood it. I am not a spacial person, and cannot picture these things. It was still kind of hard for me to figure out these rotations and such at first. But I did realize they were actually pretty easy. For rotations, we were told a trick. If the rotation was 180 degrees, we turned the paper 180 degrees, and marked the new X and Y axis, and took the "new" points. Then flipped the paper to the original direction, and plotted these "new" points, and then we got a rotation! I thought this was so much easier.

The reflection part was easy for me now as well. I just reflected the shape over the new axis it gave me. I was actually able to do this very easily, I just counted how far away the points were from the old axis, and plotted it accordingly. The translation was fun too! It was almost like a puzzle, X+4, Y-1, and you just move the points! I Actually enjoyed the translations the most. I felt like this was so much easier for me now a days than it used to be.

I also found this website, and thought it was helpful and had many many lessons plans.
Cool Math Site!