Story:

Suggested manipulatives: Pattern Blocks, Pentablocks or any geometric blocks with varying shapes.

Prep time: Adapting the Math Vitamin wording to fit your specific story, putting the manipulative out in the room, creating the data sheets and copying the student documentation forms will take about 15-20 minutes. Set-up is always more fun and shorter on time if you do this activity with a colleague.

Classroom time: Asking children to do their best work for each Math Vitamin assumes that some children will need a longer time than others. Ideally you want to offer a block of time for Math Vitamin projects and have another task available (writing, free exploration, etc.) for those students who finish work prior to their peers. For this project allow 20-45 minutes for students to work through all the steps.

How to individualize/stretch: Giving students practice counting in number groups, counting by 2’s, 5’s, etc., is a next step following 1 to 1 counting. For students who can count and notate groups of items, ask them to predict future steps in more complex patterns. For example, if they have built five steps of a pattern, ask them to estimate what the 12th step will look like and then check their prediction. Move toward 3-dimensional shapes and start talking about the volume and surface area of the patterns.