purposeful play
patterns
Teaching patterns to kids is not only really fun but it is also an essential early math skill for children to master.
Patterns are an critical part of building a solid math foundation during the early childhood years.
Patterns can be created using basically anything! You can make patterns with crayons, blocks, play cars, buttons, markers-pretty much anything you can find around the house!
early math skills
Examples of Patterns
Start with the ABAB pattern. (Example: red block-blue block-red block-blue block)
Create the pattern, describe it to your child and ask your child what would come next in the pattern.
Continue with this until your child has mastered extending the ABAB patterns you create.
Once your child has mastered extending patterns, they are ready to create patterns on their own.
First create a pattern and have them recreate it on their own.
After they are able to recreate a pattern you have created, invite them to create their own ABAB pattern.
When they have mastered creating the ABAB pattern on their own, move on to more complicated patterns.
Try ABBABB pattern (Example: blue block, red block, red block, blue block, red block, red block)
Try ABCABC pattern and AABAAB pattern.
After your child has mastered those four patterns, you can start to get really complicated! For example you could try ABBCDABBCD, or AAABCAAABC. The sky is the limit on this!
materials
Objects of your choice-suitable for creating patterns with
Purpose
Recognizing patterns
Extending patterns
Recreating patterns
Creating patterns independently
puorposeful play
Activity sets for making patterns
These are three of the best activity sets I've used in my classroom as well as at home. What do I love about these sets?
- The colors are bright and fun! Children are always drawn towards them!
- These sets make is really easy to create your own patterns to use with your child.
- They come with their own pattern cards which makes is excellent for independent learning.
- Really versatile-you can use these sets to teach all the early math skills your child needs to master by 1st grade!
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