I have been thinking about patterns for a long time, occasionally making progress in understanding how children learn to identify and think about patterns. Overall, it is slow going. There isn’t nearly as much of a research base on learning patterns as there is for...
Week 3 of my month of math in March is up on the Tiggly blog. This week: Patterns! Click on through. A pattern Tabitha made a year ago when she found two markers and a piece of paper on the table. Get ready to waltz with your wee one.
When we left off last week, I had challenged Tabitha to find a pattern on the multiplication machine so that there would be the same number of buttons up as down. This challenge followed up on her sophisticated argument that her down-up-down-up pattern yielded more...
Tabitha (6 years old) has been playing with the multiplication machine off and on for a few months now. We have never once used it for learning multiplication facts, but we have had a ton of math-learning fun with it. Recently, she carefully did...
We have in our house a thing called the "Multiplication Machine". It is a flash-cardy sort of thing. The multiplication facts are written on top of a 9x9 array of spring-loaded buttons. You press one and the button pops up, revealing the product. You can buy such a...