Looking for patterns in life science

Young children are often aware of patterns in their home and environment before they enter school. Children are familiar with the patterns of breakfast, lunch, and dinner; the sequence of a favorite story; and the rising and setting of the sun every day, but may not see these as patterns.

Patterning is a skill that provides development in both the language and the math areas of the classroom. Used as a pre-reading activity children develop visual discrimination, tracking, and verbal communication skills. Mathematically, working with patterns helps young children to predict, discuss relationships and functions, and provides experience with symbols representing ideas.

This shelf work is designed to be in the cultural area and has within the scope of the activity several concepts presented in botany, geography, and zoology. This material is organized in the following way and should easily lead the child from the simple repetition of two, three, and four part patterns, to the more complex work of discerning a pattern with only a few pieces shown, and finally matching patterns that have different symbols but the same orientation. This work is intended to provide experiences for all three age groups of the early childhood classroom.