🌱 Little Explorers Month 2 · Lesson 6
⭐ 0/6

Today we learn: spots, stripes & counting by twos

The Pattern Garden

A pattern is something that repeats in order. Look around the garden — the garden is full of them. Pick a flower, find the next one, and never stop at just one.

Age 6 35–45 minutes Maths · Reading · Nature Skills: AB · AAB · AABB · count by 2s · the number 6

Tap anything that wobbles. Everything talks back.

A sunny garden with rows of flowers
Bed 6, morning dew
Lesson
Six
🐞

Today's plan

Six jobs. Tap a job to jump to it — it stamps itself when you finish.

01

Warm-up · 5 minutes

Frog hops by twos

Frog wants to cross the pond. She only lands on every second lily pad. Tap the pads in the right order: 2, then 4, then 6…

Right now Frog is on

0

2 · 4 · 6 · 8 · 10

  • Sing it:🎵
  • 2, 4, 6, 8!🐾
  • 10, 12, 14, 16!🐾
  • 18 and 20 —💦
  • look what we did!🎉

Grown-up ask: “What's 2 more than 14?”

02

Main game · 10 minutes

Crack the flower beds

Each bed is planted in order — but one flower is missing. Tap the empty spot, then tap the flower that belongs there.

Bed 1 · A A B

Choose from the flower basket:

Now you plant

Make a pattern nobody else has

Tap a square to change the flower. Keep tapping and the flowers cycle round. Make it repeat at least twice so a grown-up can guess your rule.

03

Our number today

Six

Lesson six, so the number is six. Say it with your hands, your dots, your dice and your caterpillar.

The numeral

6

Curve down, then a loop.

Dice

Two lines of three.

Number friends

5 + 1
4 + 2
3 + 3

All of them make 6.

Hands

🖐 + ☝️

Five and one more.

Tally

𝍸 |

A bundle and one.

Caterpillar maths

Feed the caterpillar — two leaves at a time

0 legs so far

Six frame

Fill it up to six

0 dots in the frame

Real caterpillars have 6 true legs — that's our number!

04

Read aloud · 3 minutes

Sam the Snail's Stripy Shell

Grown-up reads, child listens for the repeating words. Every time you hear an order, say it out loud together.

Words to know

Tap a word to hear what it means.

Answer when you finish

What order did Sam paint on the shell?
Tell a grown-up in your own words.

page 1

Sam the snail woke up in the grass. Sam looked up. The sky was blue, blue, blue.

A small snail on grass
Morning in the garden
page 2

Sam slid over a leaf. The leaf had lines: line, gap, line, gap, line.

Close-up of leaf lines
Can you see the order?
page 3

Oh no. Sam's shell was dull. No stripes. No spots. No pattern at all.

A plain pale shell
Very plain, very sad
page 4

So Sam painted one red ring, two yellow rings, one red ring, two yellow rings. A-B-B! A-B-B!

Red and yellow paint rings
Red, yellow, yellow — again
page 5

Now the shell goes round and round in order. Sam is proud. Not a dull snail — a pattern snail!

A brightly striped snail shell
Look at that pattern!
05

Quick brain · 5 minutes

Which one is the odd one out?

Four things. Three follow the rule. One does not. Find the rule-breaker.

Loading…

06

Pattern art · 8 minutes

Draw a border that never stops

Pick a crayon. Draw a shape, then draw the same shape again and again around the page — that's a pattern border, just like on Sam's shell.

Crayon box

Tip size

Ideas

  • circle, circle, triangle
  • big line, small line
  • flower, flower, leaf
＋

Boots on mission · 10 minutes

Go and find them for real

Patterns are not only on paper. Take this list outside — a garden, a path, even a window sill counts.

🔎 Hunt for six

  1. something with 6 petals or 6 parts
  2. 6 stones in a line
  3. 6 sticks for a pattern border

🪨 Stick pattern A B A B

Lay short, long, short, long sticks on the ground. Add two more so a snail can walk it.

👀 Two eyes, two ears

Find 3 things that come in pairs. Count them by twos out loud: 2, 4, 6!

🎨 Colour stripes

Find flowers of two colours. Pick them into a cup: red, yellow, red, yellow…

🏅

Your reward board

Six stickers for Lesson Six

Every job you finish stamps a sticker here. Fill the board and print the sheet to keep in your book.

Certificate of pattern-finding

Little Explorers · Month 2 · Lesson 6

counted by twos to 20, cracked five flower beds,
read a snail story and made a pattern border.

Date: ______________

Grown-up's signature: ______________________

☕

Kitchen-table notes

For grown-ups

What this lesson is really teaching, what to do if it goes sideways, and where tomorrow goes.

What we're learning (and why patterns)+

Pattern work is early algebra. A child who can say “it goes tulip, tulip, sunflower, and then it starts again” is doing three things at once: identifying a unit of repeat, predicting, and explaining a rule. That prediction skill is the same engine behind number sequences later on.

  • AB — easiest (bed 2)
  • AAB — the unit of repeat is 3 flowers, not 2 (bed 1)
  • AABB — children often slip here and write ABAB (bed 3)
  • ABC — three-part repeat (bed 4)
  • Counting by twos — say it, clap it, hop it. Body first, paper later.
  • The number 6 — five representations of one quantity builds number sense more than any worksheet.

The reading is deliberately repetitive. Point at the highlighted repeating phrases and let your child read them from memory — that's real fluency.

Materials you need+
  • Screen, or this page printed (black-and-white is fine)
  • Anything from outside: 12 sticks, 12 stones, 6 petals, 6 pebbles
  • Crayons or pencils and one strip of paper for the border
  • A snail if you're lucky — please put it back where you found it
If they get stuck+

Do not say the answer. Say the pattern out loud with your finger: “tulip, tulip, sunflower… tulip, tulip…” and pause. The pause does the teaching.

If that fails, shrink the pattern to 3 tiles and use real objects — buttons, blocks, biscuits. Then go back to the screen.

If counting by twos feels like a wall, go back to 2, 4, 6 only, and clap it. Don't push past 10 today; tomorrow is a better day for 20.

Stretch it (if this was too easy)+
  • Ask them to plant a bed with a mistake in it and you find it. Kids love catching grown-ups.
  • Growing patterns: 1 circle, 2 circles, 3 circles — what comes next and why?
  • Count by twos backwards from 20 while tidying up.
  • Write the number 6 in paint, then make 6 different patterns using only 6 marks.
What to watch for (note it here)+

Did they find the unit of repeat, or just copy colours? Did they count by twos from memory or by ones? Jot it down — it decides Lesson 7.