Session 3 - 25/9/13

In today's session the mathematical concept that we focused on is patterns. There can be kinds of patterns - repeating and growing pattern.

A repeating pattern has objects that are used repeatedly in a particular sequence. For example, ABAB, AABB, ABB, AAB etc..

A growing pattern is when there is an increase in the size or quantity of the objects used. For example,
1,   3,   5,   7,   9,
   \ /        \  /  \  /
   +2       +2  +2

The pattern in this case is that the number is increasing in a fixed pattern (+2).

This concept is translated in problem #10 whereby we had to repeatedly count the number of letters in our names, from left to right and find out which letter does number 2013 lands at.

L          A          T          I         F         A        H
1          2           3          4         5         6         7
8          9            10       11       12        13      14
15        16          17        18       19      20       21
                                                                      .
                                                                      .
                                                                      .
                                     2013  2014  2015   2016

There is a growing pattern of +7 for all the letters. This helps me find an easy way to get to the number 2013. I found out what is the closest I could get to the number 2013 if I would to count in multiples of 7 and I found that the answer is 2016. So, I skipped backward 3 numbers to get to 2013 and found that the letter is I. Now you try it! And let me know!

There are a lot of ways that we can do to help emphasize on the mathematical concept of patterning. At times, the child would have the ability to work on simple patterns on their own. This is when teachers have to provide enrichment by modifying the activity to suit to the child's developmental need. Teachers should be mindful not to have accelerated teaching. A tip by Dr Yeap, in order to find out if we're doing accelerated teaching, is when the activity that we're doing would be taught in the future.

So in order to provide enriching and challenging activities to your child on patterning and ensuring that we're still teaching the same topics (in this case teaching them AB pattern) these are the list of activities:
- making patterns by drawing (from concrete to pictorial)
- replacing objects (eg, green button with 2 holes and green button with 4 holes)
- with the same activity and tasks provide children with more choices for them to explore more patterns
(eg, by providing them with red, green and blue beans children can make these patterns)
red = A
green = B
blue =C

Pattern 1: ABABABABABAB
Pattern 2: BCBCBCBCBCBC
Pattern 3: ACACACACACAC

So that's all for today... Signing out..

-latifahnajib