Chocolate Box Patterns

We found this cute patterning exercise over at Scholastic! Allie Magnuson, kindergarten teacher and featured writer at Scholastic, wrote a fabulous Valentine's Day lesson plan, with tons of great exercise ideas, so be sure to head over there for the full article. In the meantime, here's one of our favorite math activities Allie so kindly shared...

We love this exercise because it doesn't take too much prep work, it's perfectly themed for the holiday, and it offers a fun and inventive way to help students build visual discrimination skills as they work to distinguish one pattern from the next. Not working with patterns? Create an upper and lower case letter matching game, paste pictures on the hearts/candy box and have students work with rhyming pairs, use the candy box sections to designate word families/chunks and invite students to place the word or picture hearts in the proper place, etc. The possibilities are endless!

For this exercise and a whole host of other exciting Valentine's Day activities, be sure to read Allie's full article - Valentine's Day Sweets & Heartbeats Across the Curriculum for Kindergarten and PreK!