A science museum is using art and tradition to train math to poor children in some of South Africa's most neglected schools, based on the exquisite artwork of Ndebele artists.

Panels of geometric shapes outlined in black and filled in with bright primary colors generally adorn huts in the Ndebele tribe's homeland in northeast South Africa. On Wednesday, some of those panels appear on a wall at the Sci-Bono Discovery Center in downtown Johannesburg.

With a stack of shiny brass-and-beaded rings around her neck, Ndebele artist Esther Mahlangu, 73, stood on scaffolding as she began a small, complex model of angles and lines.

Ndebele paintings assist students understand squares, rectangles and angles. Exercises in measurements and volume has been devised from the shapes used in the stacked gateways and decorated pillars of Ndebele homesteads. Their round huts can explain circles, the relationship between circumferences and diameters, and how to solve solid geometry problems like volume.