This Insidious Dementia
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Up this month – pattern blocks for people with dementia or mild cognitive impairment. This post is another in my series of Dementia Brain Games. This time it’s a round-up of several websites that offer interactive pattern blocks.
Pattern blocks
If you’re not familiar with the term pattern blocks, they are math manipulatives that come in 6 basic shapes. They are great tools for kids to use in a math classroom and adults can have fun with them too.
The shapes include –
A green equilateral triangle (all sides the same length)
A blue rhombus (some people would call this a diamond)
A yellow hexagon (6 sides)
A beige narrow rhombus
An orange square
A red trapezoid
You can use the pattern blocks to create original patterns and shapes of your own or to match the blocks to shapes already designed.
benefits of using pattern blocks
So, what’s the benefit of using pattern blocks? Why should this be something my loved one could do?
It provides small motor activities with manipulating the objects,
Works their eye-hand coordination,
Encourages their creativity,
Uses their cognitive skills by knowing shapes, colors and where to place the objects,
and it’s fun and keeps them occupied!
Free online interactive sites with pattern blocks
Here are 3 sites that have pattern blocks that you can manipulate using your desktop or laptop computer.
Room Recess
Room Recess has a site that has tools, one of which is pattern blocks. To use it, you basically just click on a block and it pops onto the “grid.” From there, you can manipulate the block around by the mouse or keypad.
In the upper right corner of the game area there is a button marked Patterns. Clicking on that will bring up a list of 7 objects. If you choose 1 of the patterns, you can manipulate the shapes to fill in the pattern. Once finished, just hit the Trash button, then clear.
The only negative aspect on this site, in my opinion, is that there are only 7 objects to create but if you do this activity with your loved one more than once, they may not even remember doing so. If they do remember the sight, great! Encourage or challenge them to build something of their own!
Math Learning Center
The mathlearningcenter app is another site to try. This one has 1 additional pattern block which is a different shape triangle, but the others are the same.
You still have an open grid where you can drag blocks onto it and manipulate them around.
In the lower left corner of the grid you can click on the little picture and get 21 different shapes to fill using the blocks.
Cool math 4 kids
Coolmath4kids is another site where you can click on the objects and create something in the grid.
There are also 16 pattern puzzles you can “fill” with the pattern blocks, including a few really cool looking snowflake shapes.
An additional resource
If you are able to have your loved one “play” or “build” something with the pattern blocks, you might like this additional website as well. It’s called Class Playground.
This site has free printables of objects that you can build using the pattern blocks. I would be suspicious of this actually being free but if you look into the About section of the website, it does indicate the pages are free for anyone to use.
Scroll down, close to the bottom of the page, to the section marked Printables and you’ll find a whole lot of shapes.
Rather than using your printer paper, what I would do is bring up one of these pictured objects in 1 window on your browser and bring up another window in your browser with one of the websites listed above and see if your loved one with dementia can create the same object.
Other brain games
Check out my blog posts on other brain games that your loved one can do.
My Etsy store, DementiaHelpingHand, also has activities for people with dementia or mild cognitive impairment.