Why teach patterning

Create movement patterns as you move across the back yard, down the street or through the park. For example walk, walk, jump; walk, walk, jump. Or make up dances that use a repeated sequence.

Recognise, explore and create patterns, shapes and colours, eg with leaves, pebbles and 2D shapes; Nature provides patterns in flower petals, colorful gardens, and even in the coats of animals such as tigers and zebras at the zoo.

Help children to grow plants in the garden and point out the cyclical pattern of planting, growing, and dying etc. What opportunities do I provide for children to investigate mathematical similarities, differences and patterns in their lives? How do we encourage children to move confidently in space and perform different movement patterns with growing spatial awareness? What opportunities do we give children to experiment with word, language, number and shape patterns?

How do we assist children to use pattern making and pattern continuation for problem solving and investigation? In what ways do we provide opportunities for children to reflect upon their mathematical pattern making?

Aim 2 Children will develop and use skills and strategies for observing, questioning, investigating, understanding, negotiating, and problem-solving, and come to see themselves as explorers and thinkers: — In partnership with the adult, children will:.

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How should we help young children to think about and understand patterns? Young children, even babies, are exposed to many, many regularities in their worlds and in themselves. They encounter regularities that are fixed and do not move, like stripes on clothing. Other regularities unfold over time, like songs, or continue indefinitely, like counting by twos.

Babies : One type of regularity involves visual patterns in the immediate environment which are available for babies to see and examine. Indeed, research shows that babies prefer to look at patterns, rather than at uniform scenes, perhaps because patterns provide opportunities to discern differences. Baby Cassie might discern the beautiful patterns on her Boppy a pillow on which she can recline.

Cassie will also hear regularities in music, in the repeating sequences of sounds. The environment provides a wealth of regularities from which babies may or may not extract pattern and other information. Preschoolers : By the time children are in preschool, they have experienced an incredibly large number of regularities. The steps, which are all the same, ascend in a regular pattern.

In the background, the green rectangular buckets prisms are stacked neatly on top one another, each rising a constant amount over the others, until this pattern is crowned in purple. Patterns are also essential to music education.

Cultivating pattern awareness can develop a sense of rhythm and compositional awareness that sets the stage for music appreciation and participation. Additionally, some scientific studies suggest that the inherent relationship between math and music can be fostered at a very young age, as infants have been known to respond to aural and somatic patterns as much as older children respond to visual patterns.

Patterns can be found everywhere, but your child may need your help identifying them as such. When teaching your child to make or identify patterns, keep in mind how we perceive them. Typically, when we think of patterns, we think in the most basic terms: repeating a set of items in a particular sequence.

But if you look closely, there are other elements that make that a pattern. Keep this in mind when creating or completing patterns with your child so you can mix things up and make your home lessons more varied and interesting.

Other differentiators you can think of calling out when asking your child to make a pattern with items or images, depending on your child's readiness:. People may be used in a large group setting: Boy, girl, boy, girl; short, tall, short, tall; etc. But objects are probably more practical for the majority of people.

Try these options:. Many of these items can be sorted by color, which may be your child's natural inclination. Prompt them, though, to recall the other types of patterns that exist. For instance, buttons may have size patterns and beads may have different shape patterns.

You can even teach a child about patterns with nothing at all. For example, try using sounds or motions, such as clap, pat, slap, clap, pat, slap. The knowledge and understanding of patterns can be transferred into all curriculum areas and open many doors where this knowledge can be applied. And so, when you see your child building a repeated pattern with blocks, recording a decreasing number pattern in their math journal, or creating a table of increasing multiples to solve a mathematical problem, you will know that they are building important foundations for future learning.

I invite families to explore and have fun with patterning at home. Go on a pattern hunt and identify and name patterns all around you. Create patterns with shapes and colours, letters, numbers, and variables.

Share them, extend them, and record them. Talk about how patterns influence the world in which we live and the decisions we make. Now when someone asks why are children building patterns again in school, you will be able to tell them the importance of patterning.

Oh Kelli! Thank you for the insights you bring to our teaching world! Grade One students learned how to identify the core of a repeating pattern, label elements using letters, as well as extend, create and translate patterns. There is an excellent post on the importance of patterning, which I encourage everyone to read: The Importance of Patterning […]. This interesting blog tells us why time is spent exploring patterns and that researchers have found that understanding […].

What a great idea of using different elements that encourages problem-solving and thinking skills.