Patterns, Patterns Everywhere – in Places You Would Never Think!

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

You have probably seen patterns like this before in your math lessons; that's why you picked "star," and you are 100% correct! Where else have you studied patterns?

That's right. When you skip count by 2, 5, 10, or any other number, you are creating a pattern! Check out the lesson under Additional Resources in the right-hand sidebar if you want to learn more about skip counting!

Patterns also occur in nature. Maybe you have seen or even studied patterns on flowers or snowflakes. You can learn more about how snowflakes are formed under Additional Resources as well.

As you can see, patterns are a part of our everyday world. Patterns can help create structure, like you saw in the skip counting lesson. Patterns can also be very beautiful, especially patterns in nature, like the patterns created by ice crystals to make snowflakes.

The structure and beauty of patterns help many artists create amazing works of art from sculptures to paintings to poetry! Right now, you are going to use a pattern to write a rhyming poem.

First, we need to fully understand patterns. Let's look at the stars and hearts example one more time. A pattern is the same thing over and over again. So, if this pattern went on forever, it would always be star, heart, star, heart .... You get the idea.

Hey, this pattern reminds me of my favorite shirt!

Do you have a striped shirt? If it has two colors, like my shirt does, then it follows this pattern, too!

Let's look at the stripes on the shirt. Point on the pattern on the shirt with your teacher or parent. If you happen to be wearing your two-color striped shirt, point out your pattern as well!

We said we were going to write a poem that followed a pattern, and the pattern is going to be based on what lines rhyme with one another. In poetry, you use capital letters to show a rhyme pattern.

Let's look again at the stars and hearts. We can pretend that the stars are rhyming lines and the hearts are rhyming lines. Since we now know we use capital letters to show rhyming patterns, let's make the stars A and the hearts B. What does our rhyme pattern look like using the letters A and B?

Great job! ABAB – This means our first line will rhyme with our third line and our second line will rhyme with our fourth line. You could also say evens rhyme with evens and odds rhyme with odds, or every other line has a rhyme. Can you think of any other ways to describe this pattern? You can even call it the Striped Shirt Pattern!

Now that you understand patterns, you need to understand rhyming. Can you spare the time to learn to rhyme? I do hope so. Come on, let's go!

Did those last few sentences sound silly to you? What did you notice about them? They kind of sound like a song, don't they? That's because many songs share the same elements (pieces that make it what it is) as poetry. Rhyming is one of those elements (we can learn about some of the others, like rhythm and meter, in later lessons).

A rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds (or the same sound) in two or more words. For example, the word "fun" rhymes with the word "sun." You can see that the two words have the same vowel and end sounds.

Let's try some more rhymes. What are some words that rhyme with (or sound similar to) the word "think"?

• pink
• sink
• drink

Can you think of some more? Share your "think" rhymes with your teacher or parent.

Great! When you combine patterns and rhymes to create poetry, you have what is called Rhyme Scheme Poetry, which is just a another way of saying pattern poem.

It's time to see some examples of the ABAB pattern or rhyme scheme. Pay attention to the ending sounds of each line, or verse (verse is a fancy word for a single line of poetry).

A: I had a pet frog.
B: His name was Joe.
A: He came from a bog.
B: I lost him in the snow.

A: There is so much in the sky,
B: like the moon and sun and stars.
A: I like to let the hours drift by,
B: as I plan a trip to Mars

Let's practice some of the new things you've learned!