The boys and I made art with construction paper pattern blocks and had so much fun!

To make them, I traced our pattern block shapes onto construction paper and cut them out. I used the same colors as the blocks so that the boys could design their art using the blocks, and then make the same thing with paper. Tracing and cutting out the paper blocks was not nearly as tedious as I thought it would be, and Aidan (age 9) did most of his own tracing and cutting.

The best part of this activity was that all three boys could work at their own level, and it kept them busy for more than an hour!

Owen (age 3) LOVES glue. He had fun gluing and cutting out his own shapes:

Gresham designed a man with pattern block shapes and then cut out a tree and bird to go with them. I love his sun.

I told Aidan that I wanted him to make a design that started with one shape in the middle, and then had layers of shapes coming out from there. (And this counted as math, too! 🙂 )

Here is what he came up with:

It was fun to note that although he used several different shapes in his design (rhombus, square, diamond), the end product was a hexagon just like the center piece!

Here is his design on paper:

And another Aidan design:

Aidan made one design with the blocks (not paper) that looked like a poinsettia flower, and I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of it before it was ruined! I’m hoping he’ll make it for me again so that we can make a paper version. I think that color copies of the paper version would make super homemade Christmas cards!

Pattern blocks are so useful! What do your kids like to do with them?

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  1. Cassie @ 3 Dinosaurs Oct 3, 2012

    I LOVE THIS! I think I'll be trying this with my girls soon!

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