Category: Patterns

  • Finding Patterns in a Lokta Paper Blank Book

    Finding Patterns in a Lokta Paper Blank Book

    Written as part of the Count 10, Read 10 series.

    For my 40th birthday, I bought myself this beautiful Lokta paper book from a fabulous little store in the Houston Heights called Write Now!

    It has circles on it – one of my “things.” I love circles. But then I saw how the colors were laid out.

    “Holy cow! This is a teaching opportunity!” I thought.

    And it got even better at the Texas Home School Coalition’s convention this last week. I shared it with former math teacher and now-homeschooler Sharon Brantley and she saw even more goodies in it!

    You can use it to teach math!

    Anything that has more than one aspect/characteristic/color (pretty much everything) can be checked for patterns. Patterns are an essential, perhaps even the most important, building block for mathematical thinking and development.

    Here’s what you can see in this book cover:

    Connect the green dots and you get a square. (Also the yellow dots.)
    The pink dots form a line and then the one dot off to the side can make a perpendicular line to the other line. (Purple dots, too.)

    These blue dots make a funny little shape.

    But wait! There’s more!

    What Sharon pointed out to me was that you can draw an L from any dot to another dot of the same color!

    Optional: This “L” thing links directly to the slope, by the way. Between any two points of the same color, the slope is either 1/2 or -2. Cool, huh?

    Where do you see patterns in your world? Share it (and a link to the picture) in the comments!

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  • Teaching Patterns with Playful Bath Shapes

    Teaching Patterns with Playful Bath Shapes

    Do you get “why” questions often from kids?

    Differentiation is the foundation of learning. Curiosity comes in the form of “Why is that different?” And right behind it is “Why is that the same?”

    So patterns – and the lack of patterns – are essential in the development of a child.

    The picture below is a collection of Discovery Toys (not all of them because they live in a house with a 19mo child).

    While in the tub, I encourage Daughter to see which ones are the same color. You can label the bathtub tiles with soap crayons so you can discuss the patterns more easily. Use the Cartesian Coordinate plane or Excel cell names like I did in Photoshop.

    Here are some things to talk about to encourage pattern discovery and learning. Or click here to download this as a printable MSWord Document.

    • Which shapes are similar? Which are congruent?
    • Which shapes are kind of the same (similar, but not in the official math sense of “similar”)
    • Put shapes together that “go together” – these could be same shape, color, “feel” (like B6 and B7 are both angled).
    • Compare shape A5 to the shapes A3, A4, A6, A7 and A8.
    • What do cells B3 and B8 have in common?
    • How are C3 and C4 different?
    • What’s in common in cells A2 and B2?
    • How are shapes C1 and C2 different?
    • How are C2 and B3 similar?

    And then look at the world!

    When you’re out of the tub, make sure to encourage observations – of everything. For something like the gate trim in the picture you can ask questions like:

    • What is similar?
    • What pieces are different?
    • Do you see spots that are kind of the same but mirror imaged?
    • If you were to make this symmetric, what other parts would you have to add to it?

    Have fun. See patterns. Enjoy the discovery!

    Download the activity questions here.