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Kristin
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| Posted: Aug 09 2007 at 11:28am | IP Logged
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I would love to hear about your favorite activities for teaching / practicing patterns with young children!
Kristin
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Bunch 'o Honey to my Honey Bunch and Mama to five - Noah 10y  , Rose 8y  , Dominic 2.5 y  , Oliver 16m 
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GraceandCoffee
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| Posted: Aug 14 2007 at 10:47am | IP Logged
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Me too!
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Wife to the most wonderful man in the world, and mama to 4 beautiful children: meteorologist age 7, naturalist age 5, ballerina age 4, and baby boy age 19 months
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ALmom
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| Posted: Aug 14 2007 at 5:55pm | IP Logged
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Ok, I did tons of stuff with Addison Wesley Mathematics Their Way, 1976 copyright (I include this copyright because I have heard that the newer Addison Wesley is not great and very politically correct. Anyways the parts relevent to the question were make it youself - a bit easier with the book because I got blackline masters but not undoable as a make it yourself.
Here are some of the ideas:
different pictures of hands clapping, slapping knees,snapping fingers etc. The child arranges a string of these pictures and then you both do what they say over and over again - so you might do a clap, slap, clap, clap, slap, clap, .... etc.
Using pattern blocks, you build walls etc. eventually demonstrating building a simple repeating pattern (often the dc will do this on their own). You make a master copy of this pattern - ie we had paper versions of pattern blocks (copied onto appropriately colored paper so that they looked just like the pattern blocks) and glued these to card stock. These became masters for patterns to copy. (I also had a ton of these made up that we could pull from, too - some very simple, some more complicated.
We did something similiar with unifix cubes.
I made a dot chart - basically a long string of dots evenly spaced, laminated it, and then using a grease pencil or a dry erase pen (something you can wipe clean later so you can reuse your chart) and drew the beginning of a pattern (a hump from the first to the third dot for example) and the child extended my pattern. Or the child could make up their own and you extend it depending on where they are.
If you really wanted to challenge, you could use the snap, slap, clap card patterns and imitate the pattern using unifix cubes.
For my dd, we also colored some macaroni and made necklaces of different patterns - stringing the macaroni beads. I basically glued some sample patterns onto cardstock using the colored macaroni and we copied these on the necklaces. Anytime the child wanted to build their own pattern, we could make a card for their pattern and add it to the masters so different children could also copy each others pattern.
You can also do a lot of patterns using body postures. For instance, an ABAB pattern could be shown simply having different children sit, stand, sit, stand, sit and then ask what comes next. Obviously you need a lot of folks to do these so you need a large family or willing relatives and friends.
If you really wanted to get creative and didn't mind a mess, you could use anything from play doh to colored water in jars and transferring it to an ice cube tray in a pattern - say use the top row for the pattern and the bottom row to copy the pattern or just use part of the top row to show the pattern and then have the child extend it.
Some of the things that come to mind that we could add to use now - any kind of geometric figures, different colored marbles, balls, etc., different sized objects.
We had a blast with patterns. I don't think we ever labeled them symbolically but with an older child this could certainly be an extension.
Hope this gives you some ideas.
Janet
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cathhomeschool
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| Posted: Aug 15 2007 at 9:11am | IP Logged
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Janet, what wonderful ideas! It's no wonder that you had a blast!
A cute go along book that we just found at the library for teaching verbal patterns: Pattern Bugs by Trudi Harris (Look for Pattern Fish too.)
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Janette (4 boys - 22, 21, 15, 14)
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Kristin
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| Posted: Aug 17 2007 at 9:15am | IP Logged
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I agree. There are many, many wonderful ideas here! I read through the Janet's response but plan on printing it out to make sure I get all the little nuggets out of it. I also just placed holds on Pattern Bugs and Pattern Fish at our local library! HOORAY!!! 
Thanks for your help! 
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Bunch 'o Honey to my Honey Bunch and Mama to five - Noah 10y , Rose 8y , Dominic 2.5 y , Oliver 16m
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4Real Forums : Living and Loving Numbers
Topic: Teaching about Patterns
