Living Root Garden School • Design • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the copycat shapes — the same four shapes keep showing up all over the garden. Find them all.
Hunt for a spiral: a shape that starts small and curls outward, getting bigger as it goes. A sunflower packs hundreds of seeds into one flat face in spirals, a snail grows its shell in a spiral, and a fern frond unrolls in a curl called a fiddlehead.
Hunt for branching: one thing splits into two, two split into four, four into eight. A tree branches so every leaf gets sunlight, roots branch so every root tip finds water, and the veins in a leaf branch so the whole leaf gets fed.
Hunt for a wave: a traveling wiggle, not a thing. Look for wind rippling through grass, a snake's track across soft dirt, and a caterpillar walking — grip with its back legs, hump its middle up, reach forward.
Rule out the lookalikes: a ladybug's bright spots warn birds 'don't eat me, I taste terrible,' while a caterpillar's stripes break up its outline so a bird cannot tell where it ends and the leaf begins. And the rings on a tree stump are a pattern too — one ring per year, wide rings for rainy years, narrow rings for dry ones.
Ask: Which of the four patterns do you think you will find first — and where will you look for it?
Try: Hunt the yard for one spiral, one branching thing, one wave, and one spotted or striped thing. Sketch all four and label where each one was found. Look and sketch only — flowers stay on their plants and creatures stay where they are.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Count the spiral arms curving left and the ones curving right on a sunflower head (or a pinecone) and compare the two numbers — you will usually get numbers like 34 and 55, or 55 and 89. Log the counts and what you notice.
Tell: Fill in the log below — date, what you saw, what surprised you — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “The pattern that surprised me most was ___ because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw your four patterns side by side — spiral, branching, wave, spots or stripes — and circle the one that surprised you most.
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Show someone a spiral in the yard and tell them why nature uses that shape — in your own words, no reading off the packet.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can spot the four garden patterns anywhere.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Four pattern sketches with labels
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can spot the four garden patterns anywhere.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.