Patterning

We worked on patterning during part of our school time today. Andrew has been able to recognize & copy color patterns for quite some time, but today, we moved the patterns to shapes. Our calendar has a pattern to the numbers, which is well established now (you can see it in the background in pictures below). It's an A-B-B pattern, which we discussed this morning, as a lead-in to our pattern work, even though we focused just on A-B for today.

I found some fall cutouts/confetti at Michael's for cheap. I pulled one of each design out and scanned it, then used the scanned pictures to make pattern cards. The first set had a full pattern in the row, and Andrew used the shapes to copy the pattern in the next row. (and, grabbing the shapes out of the bowl also worked his pincer grasp/fine motor skills, which are still underdeveloped).

For the next set of cards, part of the pattern was there, and Andrew had to complete the pattern. As expected, he blew through both of those sets quite easily.

Finally, Andrew had a blank grid and was asked to make his own A-B pattern. He did so with ease, but was upset that in making 2 A-B patterns, he could only use 4 of the 5 designs in the cutouts. So, he pulled out the 5th design, added it to his pattern and said, "Mommy, if I put this one here, I can make it A-B-C and then I can use all the pictures."

Um. Yeah. I think he gets it. I had a feeling he would grasp the concept quite easily, but since I also believe it is important to lay a solid foundation in the beginning and we hadn't actually said patterns can be named A-B, A-B-B, A-B-C, etc., I wanted to start at the beginning.

Pretty sure it's safe to move on to some harder patterns next time.