Playing with patterns in preschool education
AUTHORS
Anna Afonso | anamargarida.aca@gmail.com | JI Santa Lucrecia
Emma Mamede | emamede@ie.uminho.pt |University of Minho
SUMMARY
This article seeks to understand the reactions of preschool children (n=17), aged 4 to 5, to the exploration of patterns, trying to answer the following questions: 1) How do children perform when solving problems involving repetition patterns? 2) What difficulties do they manifest when solving such problems? A qualitative methodology was adopted in a case study approach, seeking to describe the children's reactions to problems involving repetition patterns presented during a pedagogical intervention. During the intervention, the children were proposed problems of continuation of a pattern, discovery of an intruder in a pattern, translation of a pattern and creation of patterns. The results show good levels of performance by the children, suggesting that the problems involving patterns presented constituted a moment of stimulation of reasoning and communication in a motivating way.
KEYWORDS
Patterns, problem solving, reasoning, communication
RELEVANT DATES
Published: 2018/09/09