On the journey to St Patrick’s PS Crossmaglen for my first real visit, I knew I was getting closer because of the frequency of the football flags – Crossmaglen Rangers had recently won the All Ireland club championship! So alot of amber and black flags everywhere and of course lots of very proud children… After some discussion with Elaine the teacher, we had settled on the idea of ‘pattern’ as our theme and so when I saw this sight – it was clear the patterning (amber and black stripes) on the football shirt should be the hook for for explorations.

I was keen to keep the first virtual session simple for all concerned and so we began by asking the children to cut some amber and black rectangles from fairly stiff card. Each child cut 4 pieces approximately A4 scale.

Then in small groups Elaine organised the children to go outside to the playground with the cards, one group at a time and to lay on the ground their cards to recreate the football jersey of the local team. However this was going to be a giant shirt. I couldn’t wait to hear all about it as I could not see its progress! However Elaine managed at one point to trail the computer over to the window to angle it so as I could see out of the classroom window and the emerging shape on the playground! It was wonderful.

So for those who remained in the classroom whilst not out laying their cards, we tried some simple patterns of our own holding up amber and black cards, under the direction of a ‘conductor’ one of the classmates!

The completed shirt was photographed and I was excited to see these images which Elaine emailed to me later on.

As a follow on to this when everyone was back in the classroom, the A4 rectangles were cut up to create 8 smaller rectangles – this was done by each child, folding the A4 sheet until  8 shapes were made, then cut. So with these smaller articles  the children were encouraged to work in small groups to pool their cards and create other shapes. Lots of football themed images came out of this… goal posts, footballs, smiley faces and so on!

The children had fun exploring ways of using the cards – to create shape / pattern. Adjusting, adding cards and taking away, rotating, creating sequences  and so on.

As a wind up to all this activity I asked the children to think of other ways to make patterns, not using the shapes they had cut, but themselves – some suggested a line of boy / girl etc, heights in ascending scale, the wearing of different coloured jumpers etc. So to make their dinner- time line up, I asked them to do just that! Line up boy / girl, smallest first to tallest and each wearing alternate coloured tops!

So I am posting up some of the images Elaine took on the day and I hope you enjoy these – particularly the giant shirt, a huge communal effort and very detailed – please notice the small yellow trim at the neckline. Exquisite!

We all look forward to next step!