Math Game: Pattern Play
My daughter started her pre-K class a few weeks ago and a comment by the teacher caused me to, in some sense, rethink my strategy in working with Penny on math-related items. Her teacher said that she would be stressing the study of patterns with her children. It immediately occurred to me that patterns was something I didn’t stress nearly enough. Patterns are such a large part of math that many people define mathematics as “the study of patterns.” So over the last few weeks we’ve spent a lot of time doing what I call Pattern Play.
We do Pattern Play in many different ways and formats, but a mainstay is by using small, interlocking colored cubes, which can be found in teacher supply stores and most toy stores. My wife or I will make a pattern and have Penny copy it, or make some random patterns and put them alongside repeating patterns and ask her to tell us which of the blocks form repeating patterns. We’ll let her make a pattern which we’ll repeat, or maybe I’ll ask her to make a pattern with four elements in it; that is, a pattern that repeats after the fourth element.
A favorite of Penny’s is to make a pattern of ascending stairs using the cubes. She’ll start with one, then with two and so on until all of the cubes have been used up. As she gets older there’s a lot of math that can be explored with something as simple as this. I believe she will appreciate the different levels of complexity that can be drawn from something she was able to enjoy as early as pre-K! We’ll also do stairs using a two-cube step up, or even three. She’s practicing her rote counting, small-object manipulation, pattern visualization and addition/subtraction skills.
Just yesterday we also went on a nature walk and looked for patterns we could see in nature. Penny is very interested these days in writing, spelling and drawing so we brought along with us a “science journal” and recorded and drew some of the patterns we saw. I believe I will purchase a special notebook that we’ll use as her science journal. How neat for her would it be many years from now to look back and see her science notebook from even before her Kindergarten years?
We also study patterns in number charts. I copy a 1-100 number chart and we color all of the numbers that have a five in them, or a seven. This will form a “plus” sign, and it’s an interesting way to see how the fives are distributed throughout the number chart. We’ll also color in the odd or even numbers, or we’ll count by fives and color only those squares. This again is one of those subjects that can grow along with her, as much of number theory is based around seeing patterns in whole numbers. I’ve got books lining my library wall about number theory and if she should by random pick one out, the games she played with number charts will hopefully become a stepping stone for understanding and then enjoying that book. Or at least that’s the idea!
The more I think about math the more I realize the importance of patterns. My goal in directing more time toward Pattern Play at the expense of addition and subtraction using manipulatives is that being able to detect, create and understand patterns is the more important component of math in the long run. Penny will learn the addition and subtraction algorithms just fine, but being immersed in patterns, having them called to her attention and thus hopefully seeing them more and more around her because of it, should give her a head start in math both now and in the future.
I agree with your strategies. My daughter is in second grade and she was doing patterns in Pre-K, Kindergarten and First grade. They also used alot of shapes and colors for them to recognize the pattern.
Kim
September 16, 2008
Thanks, Kim! Hope you find something here that looks fun for you and the kids.
gregthaopenny
September 16, 2008