Patterns Around Us

P atterns All Around
Have you ever looked closely at your mother's garden or the flor of the bus or train and seen a pattern? Have you ever seen patterns in a carpet or the eyes of a fly? Patterns can be found everywhere in the world. If you train your eyes to see them, you can find them inplaces you'd never think to look. Climb aboard the World Wide Web, you're about to seehundreds of patterns your students can identify, copy, and extend.Curious eyes will be inspired to search for patterns wherever they go after they visit the photographic library of plant, animal, water, and mineral patterns. Pattern-hunters can also check out the swirls, spots, and stripes of zebras, peacocks, butterflies, shells, honeycombs, adders, and spider webs.Enter your students into the world of patterns, and offer them this site.Ask them to choose to copy a pattern and extrapolate it through imagination. Ask them to find the smallest particle of an integral pattern and to try creating a mathematical model that reproduce it.