Activities Page Six

Home Preschool Curriculum
Developed by: Community Collaboration for Four Year Olds
School District of La Crosse

Learning a Second Language

Children are curious about different languages. Learning a second

language together can be fun. You might want to start with a language from your own family heritage. Whatever language you pick, there are many age appropriate resources at the public library.

A particularly fun second language is sign language.

Paper Snowflakes

Fold a square piece of paper in half into a triangle.
Fold it again into a smaller triangle.
Use scissors to snip little triangles around the edges.
Carefully unfold to see what kind of a snowflake you make.

Picking Up Patterns

The ability to reproduce and create patterns is an early math skill that we can encourage in young children. Patterns occur throughout mathematics, but children's first experiences with patterns are with objects rather than numbers.

Children between 3 and 5 begin to reproduce a pattern created by someone else. For example, if an adult uses blocks to create the pattern of rectangle, square, rectangle, square and so on, the child will be able to look at that pattern and use his own blocks to make the same pattern.

Almost any set of objects around the house can create a simple alternating pattern (ABAB):

spoon, knife, spoon, knife
blue napkin, red napkin, blue napkin, red napkin
nut, bolt, nut, bolt; or
crayon, marker, crayon, marker

After children perceive and create this simple patterning, adults can offer more complicated patterns, such as nut, nut, bolt, nut, nut, bolt (AABAAB) or nut, nut, bolt, bolt, bolt, nut, nut, bolt, bolt, bolt (AABBBAABBB).

Encourage children to create their own patterns with objects. Ask them to predict which object would come next in one of your patterns. Invite them to sketch their patterns. Finding patterns in the world around them and creating patterns themselves will help children see patterns in more complex mathematics later on.