Counting by 2's

The ladybugs were on a mission this week- to help the children learn to count by 2's and look at number patterns. First, the children created ladybugs using construction paper. Then, the ladybugs were assembled into a triangular arrangement that was in itself a growing pattern. The children talked with their math partner (dyad) about what they noticed.
Here are a few things that they said:

"There are 15 bugs altogether."
"Each ladybug has 6 legs."
"It looks like a triangle."
"It looks like stairs."
"It's an odd, even, odd, even pattern."
"Each row gets bigger and bigger."

Then, we counted the spots by 1's and found there were 42 spots. I shared with the children there was another way we could count the spots- by 2's. So, we practiced counting by 2's and still got to 42. Please practice counting by 2's as the children are expected to be able to count by 2's by the end of kindergarten.

Below is a video of a child who was justifying how she knew the pattern was odd, even, odd, even.