Sharon's Vignette: Patterning
Patterning:
In October, we spread a large container of red and yellow links in the
meeting area and i asked children if they could make a pattern...I
demonstrated red, yellow, red, yellow. Many children chose to
copy the pattern exactly, several made the opposite pattern yellow,
red, yellow red and one child said, I like the red ones best...
I praised all attempts and reinforced that red, yellow, red,
yellow could be read by colour names or by a code: A B A B. I
also reinforced that the opposite pattern was also a A B A B pattern.
When we looked at Erin's all red line, I challenged all the children
that it is possible to make an A B A B pattern with only one colour...I
gave the children a few minutes to see what would result. When a
few children turned their pieces to positionally lay horizontally and
vertically, or grouped their pieces into ones and twos, I encouraged
all children to look at what their neighbours were doing. A few
children seemed to become more interested in making a road, or
fence or other design rather than a pattern. We "read"
the patterns that satisfied the ABAB order that we were trying to
learn. When one child made an AABBAABB pattern I excitedly
pointed out that this was also a good pattern.
