Written by Neily Boyd
All around the…mat! Look closely at the borders of many of your D&J mats and you’ll find repeating patterns! Repeating patterns are an important component of early math because they help a child learn to notice and build repetition. Math is full of repetition, and simple repeating patterns help children learn to recognize repeating structures and extend them.
And while these simple repeating patterns may seem easy to us, they’re actually quite complex for our little ones. So don’t expect your child to be able to recognize and extend a pattern right away! Instead, here’s how you can help them gradually build an understanding of repeating patterns:
(1) Narrate the pattern. Start by narrating aloud your own observations of patterns. For example, when looking at the Numbers Placemat, you might say, “Oh I see a pattern here! It goes beetle then ant, beetle then ant, again and again. Every time there’s a beetle, it’s followed by an ant.”
(2) Invite your child to narrate or copy the pattern. Using your D&J counting chips, you can invite your child to help you copy the pattern. For example, on the same beetle-ant pattern, you might place a red chip on each beetle and a blue chip on each ant. As you and your child do this together, you’re making a red-blue repeating pattern, but they have the aid of copying another pattern to help them make sense of their new pattern.
(3) Invite your child to extend the pattern. After your child has copied the pattern structure, you can ask them what would come next in the pattern. For example, “Oh, this pattern ends with an ant. But what if I wanted to keep it going? What should come next?”
As you work through these stages of pattern development with your child, don’t worry if they struggle with it. Simply make it a collaborative effort, and help them think through what to do next. Once you notice that one stage becomes too easy, move on to the next.
Ready for more? After your child can extend a pattern with two repeating units (like beetle-ant) try increasing it to three repeating units (like butterfly-moth-moth or ladybug-ant-beetle that you’ll find on the Numbers Placemat).
Capture the pattern fun you’re having with your child and tag us @dominoandjuliette so we can cheer you on!
