Growing Patterns with Nocturnal Animals: Free Printable

Shares 446

My 2nd grader loves patterns. I mean LOVES them. She’s not satisfied with the simple ones either which makes it super fun to work on with her. Last week on her internet math program, she was introduced to growing patterns and has been intrigued with them ever since. Today we worked on growing patterns with this cute nocturnal animal free printable I created.

Materials for Growing Patterns with Nocturnal Animals:

Paper and/or card stock

Laminating pouches & laminator

Scrap paper (super fun to use black paper with white crayon!)

To prep: Print and laminate the pattern building cards.

You can print multiple copies if you want to make very big copies, but one pattern using all six cards, filled up my dining room table length-wise, so one set can get you far!

What is a growing pattern?

Simply put, it is a pattern that grows or expands. Instead of having the exact same pattern the entire way through, it changes slightly with each repetition. The “pattern” part is that it changes with the same variable every time.

A simple pattern might be:

ABABABABABAB

ABBABBABBABBABBA

AABBAABBAABB

ABCABCABCABCABC

But a growing pattern could be:

A AB ABC ABCD ABCDE ABCDEF

AB ABB ABBB ABBBB ABBBBB

Our favorite of the day was this one!

AAB AABCC AABCCD AABCCDEE AABCCDEEF

Why do we want to learn patterns like these?

First of all, they are great for building reasoning skills. The kids have to explain why the pattern makes sense.

Second, they will help with mathematical problem-solving skills.

A numeric pattern might be:

2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 8, 7 (de-coded that is 2, 2-1, 2×2, 2×2-1, 2×3, 2×3-1, 2×4, 2×4-1)

Of course a second grader is not going to understand a pattern like that, but starting with simple growing patterns will prepare them for the bigger patterns later on.