What's the BIG Idea | Activity kit 4

MATH & SCIENCE LITERACY CONNECTIONS

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This kit is part of the What's The BIG Idea? series and contains:

- the Mother Goose Programs Animal Counting Collection
with 37 plastic animals

- instructional manual

- One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab by April Pulley Sayre

What do young children learn when they explore Number Patterns?

They learn about problem solving.
They learn about predicting.
They learn about relationships among quantities.
They learn quantitative language such as more than, less than and equal to.

The goal of this What’s the BIG Idea? kit:

To recognize number patterns and relationships found in sequences of objects, shapes and numerals in order to predict or solve problems.

$32.99

Download a PDF of a free sample activity

Many things in the natural and constructed world come in a predictable amount or in a recognizable sequence of numbers. Children learning the parts of their own faces learn “one nose,” “two eyes,” “two ears,” “one mouth.” The recurrence of numbers and amounts is a pattern children recognize early. Relationships of “more than,” “less than” and “equal to” are often expressed in numbers.

Number patterns are about predicting: What will be the next number or object in a sequence?

Number patterns introduce the concept of relationships among quantities (mathematical functions). Basic number patterns are:
- counting by ones, twos, threes, etc.
- doubling
- halving
- adding one more to any pattern
- repeated patterns

Recognizing number patterns and relationships is important in problem solving. When a number pattern is recognized we can apply it to broader solutions to problems. And number pattern recognition is important in advancing children’s skills from doing addition to doing multiplication.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0514746. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.