Patterns, Patterns, Patterns...

Patterns are everywhere! This week, our mathematicians learned that patterns repeat and in every pattern, there is a pattern core (which is the part that repeats). As a class, we came up with different types of patterns: movement/sound pattern, color pattern, and shape pattern. Some of these patterns have a short pattern core (for example: black, white, black, white...). And some of these patterns have a longer pattern core (for example: triangle, pentagon, square, heart, triangle, pentagon, square, heart...). We learned that we can label these patterns by using letters to represent each element in the pattern. For instance, in the pattern mentioned above, black, white, black, white... we can label it as AB,AB. The latter one we can label it as ABCD,ABCD. Our mathematicians have been busy making their own pattern books featuring different patterns they created using buttons, pasta, pattern blocks, snap cubes and stamps. This weekend, do a pattern hunt with your child. Look around your house, check out the grocery stores, and billboards and posters on the streets... you will be amazed of what these mathematician will find.