Comparisons and Patterns in Math

As you may have heard during parent conferences, we have been working with comparisons in math. We looked for things longer than and shorter than our cube towers. We took handfuls of cubes and organized them from shortest to longest. When we made towers based on the number of letters in our names we were able to compare our names to other kid's. We also took four different names, organizing them from the shortest to the longest. The final step was to draw 3-4 playing cards and organize them from smallest to biggest.

We moved on to making patterns, beginning the unit with a walk where we carefully observed our outdoor environment. We played a game of studying objects on a tray. When our partner removed one, we had to guess what was missing. Clapping, tapping and copying movement patterns has been a way of building body awareness of what a pattern is. Recently, we have been building cube towers and sorting them into groups by whether they are a pattern or not.  We are now building patterns with a variety of materials and starting to record some of the patterns we made. Our conversations are building our ideas about what a pattern is and working to uncover the important features of patterns.