Show the class the book One Duck Stuck. Read the title and author, look at the cover illustrations and let a few children make predictions before you begin reading the story. As you read, talk about the animals who are trying to help and find and count them on each page. After the four crickets come to help, stop reading and ask the children what animal they think will come next. Then ask how many they think will come. Read the next page, five frogs, and then talk about their predictions. Hopefully, they predicted that five animals would be next. Ask how they knew. Continue to read, stopping one or two more times to let the children predict and then discuss their predictions.
Next, give each child or pair of children 55 snap cubes of the same color. Tell them that you are going to read the story again and they are going to make cube trains for each animal in the story. Start reading and put one square or sticky note in the bottom row of your pocket chart and have the children take one snap cube for the duck. Next place two squares next to the first one on the last and next-to-last row of the pocket chart. Have the children make a stack of two cubes and place it next to the single cube. Continue reading and making the stacks until all ten are made. Lined up smallest to largest, the cube trains should look like a triangle.
Ask the children to look at both their cubes and the chart that you have made. What do they notice? They may say that it is a triangle or stairs or notice that it increases by one each time. Ask them, what would happen if, instead of all the animals working together, a new animal, like raccoons, came to help. How many would come? Explain that they are able to predict because the story follows a pattern. It isn't a repeating pattern like they have worked with before, but a growing pattern, because the numbers get bigger each time, but always by one. If thirteen animals came next instead of eleven, it would not follow the pattern, because that would be three more, instead of one.
Give each child a piece of construction paper, a copy of the animal pictures from the book, scissors and glue. Each child should cut the animal pictures apart and then glue them to the construction paper to recreate the growing pattern.
