Math and Art Turkey Style!

A continuous theme in mathematics is that it is all based on patterns.  Young children learn about patterns by creating repeating chains, like red, blue, red, blue, etc. Every mathematical concept has some element of a pattern, whether it is repeating, growing, shrinking, or doing a combination. Today, we talked about the pattern block shapes and how they are called polygons; shapes that have sides and corners. We then used the shapes to create a growing pattern, starting from the middle and working outwards. Concepts of symmetry were also explored.  The challenge then came in when I had the students recreate their pattern using pattern block stickers.  This required a bit of visual spatial processing, and everyone was successful.  Here is the finished product and how they worked through it.