Patterning

Young children are naturally interested in patterns and locating patterns in the world around them. They enjoy learning about patterns in stories, rhymes, songs, poems, music and stories, and they are eager to experiment with creating patterns using classroom materials. They have examined patterns in wallpaper, tiles, carpeting, on animals, and geometric designs on buildings, and recognize patterns in their lives (eg. daily routines) and in nature (eg. the seasons).

Through first-hand experiences, our students are exploring patterns by learning to create, identify and extend a variety of patterns of increasing complexity using classroom objects, actions, sounds, pictures, letters, and numbers.

Representing Numbers in Different Ways

Number concepts can be found everywhere in the world around us.   Number sense develops naturally when children connect numbers to their own life experiences, and begin to use numbers as benchmarks and references.  Through experiences with number concepts, children will develop multiple ways of thinking about and representing numbers.  Opportunities to explain their thinking and reasoning through questions and discussion will strengthen their connections and deepen their understanding and awareness of number concepts.

 We began our focus by working on counting activities, where children learned the word names for numbers and began to use them in the correct order. They were provided with daily experiences and pratise to help strengthen and reinforce their understanding of counting.  Through these experiences, children developed counting strategies, learned to assign each object with one number (one-to-one correspondence), and recognized that when counting, the last number named represents the total number of objects in a set.  By incorporating dice and dominoes into their play, children learned to recognize small groups of objects without having to count (subitizing).  We introduced the ten-frame and tally marks to focus on building number relationships with five and ten.