Take a walk around a familiar place like your neighborhood, a park, or a hiking trail.
Discuss the surroundings with your children and encourage them to share what they see and feel. Prompt them to;
- Identify five different center-oriented patterns in their backyard.
- Locate the home (i.e. center) of at least three insect and/or animal species (e.g. an ant’s den, a bird’s nest, etc.)
- Show a child how the patterns of water erosion (cut into dirt) match the patterns of veins in a leaf.
- Discuss fractal patterns. Ask your child to identify 3-4 scales of fractals in the branches of trees.
- See if your child can use patterns to connect a tree with something seemingly unrelated, like a river or a road system.
- Identify and describe five symmetric organizations (e.g. your skeletal system, a flower, etc.).
- Identify three things that form dualistic pairs (e.g. males and females, pairs of hands, sun and moon, dog and cat, etc.).
- Pick 2-3 items and describe where they ultimately originated from (i.e. trace backward in time where trees, products, or a food item started from).
- Show children that all key things in their lives (i.e. our air, food chain, fuel, and plastics) all come from trees and plants.