(Be sure to check out the similarities between this and the great stellated dodecahedron!)

We can look at the small stellated dodecahedron in two different ways:

The small stellated dodecahedron is simply 12 stars, called pentagrams, intersected in a special way.

It's easy to see the yellow pentagram, but can you find some of the others? You should be able to find pentagrams that are green, red and navy blue. There are two pentagrams of each color, but we can only see the ones facing us. There is another yellow pentagram on the other side that lies in a parallel plane to the one facing us! This is true for all the other 6 colors.

As we've seen with the other stellated polyhedra, the term "stellated" means that this polyhedron can be created by extending the faces of the dodecahedron. Can you see how?

When I constructed this model, I first built the dodecahedron. Then I made the tips and glued them on. The stellated dodecahedron is made up of 12 tips with 5 isosceles triangles in each tips for a total of 60 triangles.