Shape and number patterns

Today we have been exploring patterns in maths. This morning we explored mathematical patterns using shapes. We made patterns with different shapes and had to try and remember the names of the 2D and 3D shapes we were using. We also used the shape tiles to make patterns and explore how they fitted together.

This afternoon Reception were doing some mathematical investigations. We talked about what 'investigation' means - Harry said "it's when you test something out." We looked at some multilink that was in the pattern pink, blue, blue, pink, blue, blue. The question was: If we make this pattern with 10 pinks cubes, how many blues will there be? We estimated how many we thought there were going to be and then worked out how to test it out. We had to make the pattern of pink, blue, blue until we had used 10 pink cubes. Then we had to count how many blue there were. How many do you think? There were 20! We talked about why this was and found out that there are always double the number of blue cubes as pink in this pattern. If there is one pink cube, there are two blue ones. If there are two pink cubes, there are four blue ones. If we made this pattern with 20 pink cubes, how many blue cubes do you think we would need?

Then we explored some more patterns. Lucy, Hope, Aaron and Harry had a tricky challenge! In a pattern of square, square, circle, if I had 12 squares, how many circles would there be? They used paper and a pencil and drew out the patterns to work it out. We found out that the answer is 6. This is because there are half as many circles as squares. If we had 10 squares, we'd have 5 circles. If we had 20 squares, how many circles do you think we would have?