Pattern Blocks

Pattern Blocks are one of the mathematical manipulatives developed in the 1960s by Education Development Center as part of their Elementary Science Study project.^[1] They allow children to see how shapes can be decomposed into other shapes, and introduce children to ideas of tilings. The Pattern Blocks includes multiple copies of six shapes:

Equilateral triangle (Green)
60° rhombus (2 triangles) (Blue) that can be matched with two of the green triangles
30° Narrow rhombus (Beige) with the same side-length as the green triangle
Trapezoid (half hexagon or 3 triangles) (Red) that can be matched with three of the green triangles
Regular Hexagon (6 triangles) (Yellow) that can be matched with six of the green triangles
Square (Orange) with the same side-length as the green triangle

All the angles are multiples of 30° (1/12 of a circle): 30° (1×), 60° (2×), 90° (3×), 120° (4×), and 150° (5×).

Use

The blocks were designed with their possibilites for both mathematics and play in mind. The advice given in the 1968 EDC Teachers' Guide is: "Take out the blocks, and play with them yourself. Try out some of your own ideas. Then, when you give the blocks to the children, sit back and watch what they do."^[2]

Pattern Blocks are used for creative design: tiling patterns; pictures of animals, flowers, boats, rockets, and so on, and for mathematical purposes other than geometric (e.g., introducing ideas of fractions and proportionality).

An example of their use is given by Meha Agrawal: "Starting from the center, I would add tier after tier of blocks to build my pattern — it was an iterative process, because if something didn't look aesthetically appealing or fit correctly, it would require peeling off a layer and reevaluating ways to fix it. The best part was the gratification I received when my creation was complete. Though individually boring, collectively these blocks produced an intricate masterpiece that brought art and math, big-picture and detail, simplicity and complexity closer together".^[3]

Developments

A number of compatible shapes that extend pattern blocks are commercially available. Two sets of "Fractional Pattern Blocks" exist: both with two blocks.^[4] The first has a pink double hexagon and a black chevron equivalent to four triangles. The second has a brown half-trapezoid and a pink half-triangle. Another set, Deci-Blocks, is made up of six shapes, equivalent to four, five, seven, eight, nine and ten triangles respectively.

Christopher Danielson developed a new set of five blocks, Twenty-First Century Pattern Blocks.^[5] The rhombus in this set has the same size as the blue rhombus in the traditional set. The dart and the 30°–60°–90° triangle have the same area, while the kite and the hexagon are twice that area. Like the traditional set, all the angles are multiples of 30°.

The black chevron and pink double hexagon are one set of fraction pattern blocks	The purple triangle and brown quadrilateral are another pair of fraction pattern blocks.	Pattern Blocks and Deci-Blocks	Twenty-First Century Pattern Blocks