My preschooler loves math. He also loves arts and crafts, but everyone knows his real love is math. Most of the time, I’m able to combine the two together in a “lesson” to teach him something math related, while we’re creating something fun. Did you know that mathematics is sometimes called, the “science of patterns”? Think about it! Patterns happen everywhere, whether it’s in repeating numbers, colors, shapes, or expressions. By showing kids to look for a pattern, you’re teaching them the basics of problem solving.
For this craft, I had all these leftover little squares of construction paper. We decided that we would make a spring flower craft out of them, using different shapes. We did circles, triangles, and squares. This was a fun craft because we got to talk about shapes, patterns, AND make a cool art project at the end to show off!
What We Did:
- for the triangles, we used two colors as petals, and laid them down in a pattern. The placement of which way the triangle went wasn’t important, the pattern of which color went next was the important part.
- for the circles, I traced out circles from big to small, and had him cut it out. Then he glued them in descending order, biggest to smallest, learning about sizes as well.
- For the squares, we left them the same size, and just layered them on top of each other, with an additional circle for the middle.
My leftover pieces of construction paper. They were perfect for this project.
I had my preschooler cut out circles. We also cut the squares diagonally to make triangles, and finally left them as they were in order to have our three different shapes.
He also cut and glued on some grass, and flower stems.
For the triangle shapes, we used two different colors to make a repeating pattern. It didn’t matter the orientation of the triangle, what mattered was the COLOR PATTERN.
For the circles, we went from biggest, to medium, to smallest. Again, learning sizes is another math concept at work here!
For the squares, we put them together and talked about how they made a pretty shape together, and how flowers in nature can look like that as well, like gerber daisies (which happen to be one of my favorite flowers).
And our final product! Circles, triangles, and squares all working together to make a beautiful flower art craft. In the meantime, it also taught my preschooler some patterns, shape and sizes recognition, and how nature also uses math. So go forth, have fun, and mix math and art together!
