Posted in Homeschool Talk
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My 7yo son loves to play with pattern blocks. So today we focused on geometry using the pattern blocks and a book called 20 Thinking Questions for Pattern Blocks (that I'm embarassed to say, was gifted to me when I started homeschooling a few years ago and I have only just begun to use it this year.) Each question or lesson gives a list of materials needed, a section on how to introduce the question, a box of possible problems that might come up and how to handle them, some examples of what you might see in your student's work, what to look for, discussion questions and then a journal reflection. This book is geared towards 6-8 graders and I could easily see myself doing this with my 8th grader once a week. For now, I have just pulled out the bits that I can do with my younger son. We can't get into the deep detail that the book does, especially in relation to decimals and percents and I don't bother with the journal entries because I don't want to slow him down with tedious writing.
Question #2 asks: How many different triangles can you make? We started by reviewing the names of the shapes and then I made a simple triangle and asked ds to make a few of his own. Once he saw that he could make triangles out of other shapes beside triangles I urged him to make larger, more complex triangles consisting more varied shapes.
Question #11 asks: What patterns do you see? This particular activity requires the child to only use one shape to recreate that shape in a larger size. Once the student can make it using only a few blocks he is challenged to make the next larger size. It took my son a few tries to get the blue parrallelograms right but he figured it out and found it even easier after that to manage the other shapes. After class he had some free time so I let him free play with the hexabits which as is customary with anything ds plays with, he made wheels out of so he could race them and later to play war with.
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