Although we have talked about patterns since the beginning of kindergarten, we have been really focusing on them in recent weeks. We started out the unit on patterns by reading a book called The Sultan's Snakes. This book was about a man whose snakes played a trick on him by hiding throughout his kingdom. The patterns on the snakes' scales made it easier for them to hide. Afterwards we made pattern snakes of our own (see above). We have been learning about all different kinds of patterns; color patterns, shape patterns, size patterns, and movement patterns. The students are learning about how each pattern has a "unit." The unit is the part that keeps repeating. We often label the unit of the pattern with letters. For example, in a "circle, circle, square, square, circle, circle, square, square pattern" the unit would be "circle, circle, square, square." This is the part that keep repeating. We could also add letters to the pattern and call it an AABB pattern. One day during our math block, each child made patterns using objects around the classroom. Here are the patterns they came up with (note: some children were absent from school this day and are missing from these pictures).
