Symmetrical Snowflakes

Even though we don’t see much snow here in Texas…with the exception of last year’s record snowfall{s}…we “let it snow” this week with a fun little symmetry activity. This is one of my favorites of the season! This week we were reviewing shapes and patterns so this little lesson fit in perfectly. We reviewed repeating patterns & growing patterns and revisited the concept of symmetry and our symmetrical turkeys. Then I had the kids create symmetrical snowflakes…

And just like real snowflakes, no two were the same!

To make the snowflakes, I cut 4 8x2” strips of blue paper and assembled into “snowflakes”. I die cut tons of white pattern block shapes for the kids to use to create their patterns. {Ummm…I had NO idea we had pattern block die cuts. Shocker of epic proportions. This saves me a LOAD of time cutting each one out piece by piece :)} Then the kids got busy creating their own little snowflakes! This was a great assessment to see which of my kids are still struggling with patterns & symmetry.

Growing or Repeating?!

When we talk about skip counting with our kids, we explain how the numbers “grow”. Before we get too deep into “growing numbers”, we illustrate this concept by talking about growing patterns. Since my kids were having a little trouble understanding the difference between growing and repeating, we practiced the concept every morning {quickly} during our morning meeting and then completed this fun little activity the following week in their math tubs. I gave them a tub full of cardstock pattern blocks and instructed them to create two repeating patterns and two growing patterns. Then we hung them up in the classroom as a visual reinforcement!! This really helps my sweet babies who are still having difficulty understanding number patterns :)