Some patterns are made by using rotations. A rotation is a turn.
If you place your pencil into the middle of a piece of paper and hold it down in a fixed position, you can rotate or turn your paper around. After one full turn, 360 degrees, it will be back where it started. This is rotating the paper around its centre, and the paper stays in the same place (just in a different position).
You could also rotate the paper from a different point, for example if you placed the pen at the edge instead, or even from a point outside of the shape.
There is an example of rotation with the plates on the dinner table in Maureen Roffey’s doll’s house. The plate, cutlery and napkin are repeated four times around the table, each one facing out. They have been rotated one quarter turn each time, with the middle of the table being the centre of the rotation. This allowed the plates to move to the different seats at the table, not just be rotated and stacked on the same spot!
