The Early Literacy Connection: Patterns & Change

Children’s books and every day activities allow you to teach your students in pre-school  about early math concepts along with building her early language and literacy development.

READ

Build your student’s love of books by encouraging her to join you in saying a repeated text or pattern

found in the illustrations of a book.

Try these activities:

• Read children’s books with recurring or repetitive words, sentences, and refrains. Encourage your students  to join you in saying the repeated words or text to help her learn about repeating patterns.

• Share books that focus on daily routines such as bath time and bedtime.

• Share books that show changes such as a puppy growing into a dog or the four seasons. Visit your local library for more children’s books about patterns.For example: Is Your Mama a Llama? Deborah Guarino or  the Three Bears, Byron Barton

TALK

Help build your stuudents’ vocabulary through conversations about patterns and change.

Try these activities:

• Ask open-ended questions to help your students’ understand patterns and sequence (“What would come next?” or “What would your pattern look like if you put a red block here?”).

• Use words to describe changes in everyday conversations such as taller, stronger, longer, older, and bigger.

• Talk with your students’ about steps or sequences that need to be taken when doing a daily activity such as cooking, bathing, and getting dressed.

WRITE

Support your students’  print awareness by using writing and environmental print to show patterns and change.

Try these activities:

• Create a bedtime or getting ready for preschool picture sequence chart for your students  to follow by using simple pictures and words. Place the picture chart at your child’s eye level.

• Create pattern books with your students  by using stickers or pictures from magazines to illustrate patterns found in nature or everyday objects. Also go on a pattern walk and take pictures of repeating patterns on sidewalks, signs, buildings, fences, etc.

• Create books that illustrate change. Encourage your students  to create her own books the include drawings or photographs that show changes such as “When I was little…Now that I’m big”.

SING

Help your students  tune in to sounds in his environment by helping him hear repeating patterns in sounds and words in books and songs.

Try these activities:

• Help your students  experience growing patterns through songs. Sing songs that add one word or action to each verse .

• Listen for sound patterns inside and outside. Ask your students if they  can hear a sound pattern indoors such as a clock ticking (tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock). Listen for sound patterns outside such as a bird chirping or hammering from a construction site.

• Share rhymes and chants that have repeated words. Ask your students which words or whole

section of the song they  say over and over again. Once your students know a song or rhyme, pause

so she can fill in the missing words. Your students may enjoy the “Old McDonald Had a Farm

“pattern song.

SOURCES:

Allison, L., and Weston, M. (1993). Eenie meenie miney math!: Math play for you and your preschooler. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

org/cmnh/uploadedFiles/Programs/PatternActivitiesForEarlyLearners.pdf

Copley, J.V., Jones, C., and Dighe, J. (2007). Mathematics: The creative curriculum approach. Washington D.C.: Teaching Strategies.

Epstein, A.S., (2007). The intentional teachers: Choosing the best strategies for young childrenʼs learning. Washington DC: National Association for the

Epstein, A.S., (2009). Numbers plus preschool mathematics curriculum: Teacherʼs manual. Ypsilanti, Michigan: HighScope Press.