What Is This Pattern and Why It Is So Important
What is the pattern? How should pattern studies be applied? What are the benefits of pattern studies for our children? Why is pattern studies so important in preschool period?
Let’s start with the first question. What is the pattern?
If we answer you that we are actually in a pattern! For example, many examples can be made such as the sun rising every morning and the sun setting every evening, the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, seven days a week, twelve months of a year. Pattern; It is defined as the systematic or sequential renewal of shapes, sounds, symbols and situations by following each other regularly. In fact, we are both in a pattern and living the patterns we have established in our own system. We experience a successive renewal, such as waking up every morning, having breakfast, going to work, and sleeping every night.
Now that we are trying to explain the pattern as much as we can, let’s come to the second question.
How should pattern studies be applied?
In this article, let’s say again that we will talk about pattern studies applied in the preschool period. We can state the pattern standards that our preschool children should gain as follows; classifying, separating and sorting according to number and other properties (color, size), recognizing, defining and continuing the pattern. In pattern studies, as in other studies, we start from concrete and simple. Our material we will use at the beginning is of course our legos. We can build towers in the continuity of one blue, one yellow, one blue and one yellow with Legos. You can build lego clusters on the ground. Like one lego, two lego, one lego, two lego.
If we do these studies periodically, after a certain study, our children will start to notice the pattern. So how should it develop afterwards? You can ask your child to construct a pattern, leave a gap in the patterns and ask them to complete it, you can set up a pattern, and then you can ask to disrupt the pattern you have set up and make the same pattern you have made. Depending on the development our child shows, you can either rerun or switch to triple patterns. You can make works from the visuals we have prepared for you. Of course, our magic word in this process is PATIENCE. Putting aside our desire to receive quick feedback from our children, let’s continue our pattern studies by patiently, spreading over time, having fun and playing.
The benefits and importance of pattern studies for our children?
As we said while answering our first question, we live in an order and we all have our own order. We try to make sense of events and facts in a certain order and we try to preserve our specific order. Thanks to these patterns, we can develop our predictions, establish a cause-effect relationship between events, and make inferences for ourselves. These and more are the part that develop our social skills. So when it comes to how it contributes to the education of our children. The first is language development, the second is math development. Let’s start with language development. The order of the words we use in speaking is actually a pattern. Let’s call it the subject-predicate in its simplest terms.
When children start to read, they first recognize the letters and the juxtaposition of the letters in a certain order creates words. Research has shown that the child who spends time in the pattern makes the transition to reading faster and more comfortably. Because it recognizes the pattern order, it will define the word formation order and do the order. The predictable relationships between the patterns are said to be similar to the predictable relationships between the letters. The same is true for mathematics.
Predictable relationships between patterns are similar to predictable relationships between numbers. Again, according to the researches, it was stated that it is important to develop analytical thinking, to prevent the difficulties they may encounter in their later mathematical life and to create a good foundation in their further education life, to focus on pattern activities in preschool and primary education mathematics programs. In fact, in its simplest terms, mathematics is a language of patterns. The child who meets and defines the pattern in the preschool period will easily understand the language of mathematics in the future. Features such as recognizing and maintaining patterns are very important in seeing mathematical relationships, making generalizations, and comprehending the order of mathematics.