Hello... RG got a new block puzzle set a few weeks ago. the set comes with a small booklet of of tangram puzzles you can make using the shapes, either a cat, flowers, rocketship etc.
After doing that for a better part of the day, later that night we used the pieces of the puzzle to learn simple math!
The first activity: Learn math through repeating patterns
What does that mean?
A repeating pattern is a cyclical repetition of an identifiable core. The core is the shortest string of elements that repeat. For example:
This is a repeating pattern in the form ABB, since it has three elements -- blue, red, red -- as the core.
(read more about that here.. Defining Reasoning and Proof)
we had two levels of pattern identification in this activity:
1. first being simple repetition of colour (blue, pink, blue, pink)
2. Then we moved to shapes (rectangle, circle, rectangle, circle)
3. then we upped the ante. i gave her both colour and shapes. ypu can see the figure below. The more complex the pattern, the more sophisticated the reasoning involved and in this case RG has to reason both the next colour that came in the sequence and which pattern of that colour.
it was really fun to see her compute how this works for the first time. after awhile she got the hang of it.
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| Picture showing the slightly more complex pattern identification (well, for a 3 year old haha) |
once she got tired of that, we did basic addition. i dont think RG still has the concept of addition understood, though she could count (a little). but we did it anyway as an exposure that can be shelved in her mind for now. the pictures are self explanatory.
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| Simple addition |
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| Allowing RG to visualise simple equations. The whole activity took about 30 minutes to do. but it was worth it! |
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