Pattern Rugs

For the second Kindergarten project, we again began with a picture book. This time I chose two (one for the beginning and one for the end if I needed to stall!) I started class by asking the kiddos what a pattern was. I got a lot of "red blue, red blue" and "1,2,1,2". I asked them if it just had to be numbers or colors. We came up with other patterns like shapes and letters, etc. I read them Pattern Fish by Trudy Harris. One page would show an eel with a "stripe, dot, dot... stripe, dot, ____?" And the kids would fill in the blanks. They played along so well, even when the patterns got kind of tricky.

After reading, I showed them some pictures of rugs and asked if there were any patterns in the rugs. We saw some shapes and colors that repeated. I asked them to quietly find their chair (we do stories on the floor by the Team Board), and wait for directions. I have found that going slowly, step by step, really gets the best results.

First step, I modeled coming up to get paper. They selected a 12x18 piece of white paper, then 4 colored 3x12 stripes. One orange, one blue, one green, one purple. I wish I could give them more choices, but until we get procedures down, them seem to have the most success with uniform supplies. After that, we used "raindrops, not puddles" to glue our stripes down. Make sure to remind them to leave white space at the top and bottom. It also helped to discuss horizontal vs vertical (I have those words written out in their appropriate direction above and beside by door.)

After all stripes were glued down, I gave them each a black marker and drew an example of a pattern on a sample stripe on the white board. They were so creative when I released them to make their own patterns. Some did their initials in a pattern, others drew a person, dog, person, dog. For the final piece, we used scissors to make fringe for our rugs. The clean up for this project was fairly easy. I usually just let one helper handle all the glue, and they do a great job! I love how seriously kids take their helper jobs. you would think they were getting paid!