Pattern Play Dough

Patterns can be made using a variety of different objects and materials. For this easy to set up activity to try at home we used the coloured play dough and wooden stampers from our Changing Trees activity box. Not only was this activity great for learning maths but also helped develop fine motor skills as well.

Set Up

We used the stampers from our Changing Trees Activity box but you could also use different objects from around the house. Lids, shells, small toys , the possibilities are endless.

Both the girls were keen to get going. Both started off by simply mark making into the play dough. Once I set M the challenge of creating a pattern she was off. Her patterns started off simple, alternating the stampers one at a time. The I created a pattern for her to continue where I varied how many times I used each stamper in the pattern. She easily was able to continue my pattern and then about trying to create a challenging one for me.

They both busily reworked their play dough so that they could create new patterns or for F mark make again and again. M by the end wanted to make ever more challenging patterns for me to try. Then we started creating patterns where there was a missing shape in the middle of the pattern. This meant learning a new way of trying to solve the pattern, potentially actually looking at the end of the pattern to see how it continues and therefore work backwards as to what the missing shape must be.