February 15, 2018
Playtime Patterns
Normally, Lucas’ idea of “playing trains” is to build a train track with the little tykes track and run every vehicle with wheels on the tracks in a line saying encouraging bits as they crest the one hill. Lately, he has been making patterns. (This is great practice for colors, counting, and future math skills!)
This time, we had just left a duplo building where he’d made single color stacks of blocks and laid them out in blue, green, red, blue, green, red, blue. He quickly built something and said, “take a picture of my rainbow man!”
This came with a huge Lucas grin. (I had to go get my phone with this builder trailing behind until I snapped the picture – then he raced back to the playroom.) When I returned to the playroom, he had the train track laid out in a color pattern.
“Mom look!” he called and pointed out each color with a shout as he walked along, “red! Yellow! Blue! Green! Red! Yellow!” This continued along the length of the track with all thirty or so pieces.
I told him, “good job with your pattern!”
Jaquline ran in while he was shouting to notice the pattern and hurried back to her snack.
“Mom!” Jaquline smiled and showed me her orange slices, “look, a rose pattern!”
Lucas clapped his hands, “I can have one-two-three-four-five!” And he wiggled his fingers as he streamed the numbers together. Jaquline laughed and shared her snack, saying, “it is for everyone, Lucas.”
Jillian built a puzzle we’d found to “check the pieces” (puzzle pieces get lost like socks in the washer) and discovered two missing pieces. She checked the odds box without luck but left the puzzle on the table. Lucas found it and gasped, “Oh NO! MOM, we HAVE to find the lost ones!” (He really doesn’t like broken or missing items. He is the only one who won’t do two mix-matched socks. He knows if he doesn’t get his own, I will just grab two from the sock box that look similar: he takes pains to bring me the matched pair.)
Kimberly was using the shape blocks for geometry and left a bright pile on the table. She came back after gathering the rest of her papers to find Lucas had sorted them by color.
He was helping Christina and Rebeccah with the candy machine (someone – aka Lucas – stuck two pennies in at the same time so they had to do some repair) and while they took turns sorting and counting the coins for their savings goal, they guided Lucas in sorting the favorite blues into the center of the bowl!
“Mom! I love blues!” Lucas claps. Rebeccah rearranges the bowl by moving a few pieces and says, “perfectly balanced.”
(Maybe we all like perfect patterns.)
Thanks for reading!
Type at you later…
~Nancy Tart