Hands-on-Homework - More Maths Week - Patterns

As I said in my last post it's Maths week at my school in New Zealand this week and I'm joining my class in doing lots of different maths activities.  One fun challenge we did this week was completing candle patterns.

Candle Patterns

Last week was Mum's birthday and we had some leftover candles.  So for Maths this week we also played a game where Mum would make patterns out of the candles from her cake and we would have to finish them.

So here's the first pattern challenge - and the simplest.  All I had to do for this was just copy what Mum had done before.

And here's my finished version - pink, blue, yellow, yellow...

Here's the second challenge. 

This one was a little bit harder, though not too hard.
It went candle, candle holder, candle, candle holder.....

The next one looked really easy.  The pattern so far is one candle, two candles, four candles.

 

First I tried adding - five candles, six candles, eight candles because I thought the pattern went number, next number, skip a number.  But I was INCORRECT!

I said "I can't do it then. It's too hard."  But then I decided I was going to be resilient and keep trying!  Then I worked out why I was incorrect.  I needed to use my two times tables.

Here is my correct answer - it goes 1, 2, 4, 8, 16.  Each number is 2 x the number that goes before it.

Do you want to know something interesting?  I felt bad when I got it incorrect and it seemed really hard.  But at the end once I had completed it I felt better than I had when I had completed the easy ones.  Next time I'll try and remember that the hardest ones feel better at the end.

Challenge 4

This one was quite tricky but I completed it.  The pattern was that all of the candles had holders under them and the holder always had to be the same colour as the candle that was before it.

The final challenge was the hardest of all - not because the pattern was hard, but because I had to light lots of candles. This was quite scarey for me because I don't like fire.  In our family we say that brave doesn't mean not scared of something it means feeling scared but doing it anyway.  So I took some breaths to help me calm down and I tried my best.

So here I am feeling scared, but doing it anyway.  As I kept trying my feelings slowly changed.  By the end I was actually liking lighting the candles and I even asked Mum if I could do some more!

My baby brother loved the candles!

In this picture I looked so astonished that I did it.  I felt very proud.

This maths activity turned out to be very fun AND I learned that even when things get tricky I should keep trying them because at the end I feel good.  (In my class we call this resilience!!)