Patterned Name Art

What You Need:

• Paper
• Pencil
• Markers, crayons or colored pencils

What You Do:

1. What patterns fascinate your child? Perhaps it's the repetition found in nature ranging from the stripes on a tiger to the spots on a jaguar. Or, it might be the bold geometric prints in Native American beadwork.
2. As you talk about patterns, have your child use the pencil to draw her name in large block letters. The letters should be big enough to fill with clearly visible patterns.
3. Have your child create a pattern to fill in the first letter in her penciled name. For this example, we used a combination of red checks and lines.
4. Fill the next letter with the same pattern but alter one element of the pattern. It can be a change in colour or a shape or line. In this example, we removed the lines and have created a similar pattern with only red checks.
5. Again, fill the next letter making one change in the pattern used in the previous letter. This time we changed the colour for a pattern of blue checks.
6. Continue changing one element at a time, letter by letter, until the entire name is filled in. Our example started with a pattern of red stripes and checks, and finished with with a pattern of blue stripes and checks.

Expand on this project by creating a whole series of patterned names. In one, change only the colour. In another change only the scale, or size, of the pattern. How many different ways can you vary this and what is the effect in each?