Patterns, Sets, and Addition: It's All Connected in 1-4

These past few weeks in Numeracy we've been working on combining equal sets (in other words, simple addition, as in: 2 + 2 = 4). But before we get to that, I'd like to show you some of the "building blocks" that made these lessons possible.

Shortly after we returned from winter break, we had our first experience with sorting objects into equal groups, or matching sets. We'd talked about items that come in "pairs," like socks, mittens, even our eyes and ears. Later, the children worked with partners (or, rather "pairs" :) ) to sort unifix cubes into equal groups. We drew lines down the center of small whiteboards to use as a sorting mat.

Each pair received two different colors, presented in one large group. While some ended up sorting their cubes by color, not everyone did, which was absolutely fine, as the goal was simply to make two equal groups of cubes. Classifying by color was an added bonus, and it helped with the next portion of our activity:

Making patterns! The children continued to work in pairs, and there was some great discussion going on as they worked out what, exactly, was the right way to do this. (I'll point out that we'd been working on AB patterns daily as part of our Numeracy circle time, as well as in various contextual, play-based ways.)

Later we used laminated sorting mats and plastic animal manipulatives to continue our work with equal sets. I showed the children how to check their work by drawing lines from the animals in the first column to those in the second, as Shadha demonstrates here:

It was great to see these types of sorting activities pop up during independent play! Here, Hamdan has resourcefully recreated the sorting mat and used his favorite toys (the sought after plastic jungle animals) to make equal sets. Great work!

Our exploration of both patterns and equal sets continued as we began our Minibeasts unit: We painted striped patterns on bees . . .

by Salama

by Majed (top) and Hajer (bottom)

. . . and we made equal sets on the wings of ladybugs (or "ladybirds," going with the British form our school uses). The project you see a glimpse of below is a result of the children's independent work.

We began by drawing matched sets on the whiteboard -- so, if I put one spot on the right wing of a ladybird, a child volunteer would draw one on the left. If there were two on the right, there'd be two on the left, and so forth. We then counted the total number of spots on each ladybird (a bridge into, you guessed it, addition, or combining sets.) This presented a great opportunity to practice counting by 2's, so we made up a little chant:"2! 4! 6! 8! Who do we appreciate? Ladybirds, ladybirds, laaaaadddy BIRDS!" Throw in a few dance moves, and the children could count by 2's all day!

Following minibeasts, our topic was farm animals. Since we were also learning the letter "Ee" in phonics, counting and combining eggs was an excellent tie-in. It also gave us a chance to put our lovely nests to good use!

I started by setting out two nests on the carpet, each with an equal number of eggs (1, 2, or 3) inside. I told the children these were the eggs my chickens had laid and had them count the number in each nest, which was then written on the board. Now our job was to collect the eggs from both nests and put them in a basket to take home for supper.

After gathering all the eggs, we counted the total from our basket. Some children took the eggs one by one out of the basket as they counted . . .

. . . while others elected to dump all of them out and the systematically order and count them. Either way was, of course, absolutely fine!

You could almost see their eyes flash when they realized that if there were two eggs in each nest to start, there'd be four eggs in the basket.

Midway through the activity, one little boy was staring down at his hands, then suddenly gasped and turned to face me: "Ms. Emy! Ms. Emy! Five [showing me his left hand], five [showing me his right hand], TEN! [putting both hands up together]." How fantastic it is to see a child work something like this out on his own! (I mean, talk about extending patterns!)

Oh, and a side note: I made an equal number of brown and white eggs (using laminated paper, as plastic eggs aren't available here), which could then be used for additional sorting and patterning activities (i.e., sorting by color, making AB patterns). All in all, very integrated, and very useful! Some of the best maths we've done all year :)