Measure 33 — MATH 8

Patterning

Child shows increasing ability to recognize, reproduce, and create patterns of varying complexity

Young children experience a variety of patterns in their everyday lives. Patterns, such as the sequence of steps in an everyday routine or patterns in songs and stories, provide regularity and predictability that help children make sense of information and remember sequences of actions, words, and events. Learning about patterns and learning to recognize and analyze the serial regularity in repeating patterns, such as the simple repeating sequence ABAB, is thought to be important to fostering young children’s logical reasoning skills and to preparing children for later work with algebra and probability.

Infants and toddlers are sensitive to regularity and repetition in their environment. They react to the simple patterns that occur in their interactions, such as the repetitive hide-and-appear in a game of peek-a-boo. They quickly attune themselves to the repetitive sequences in these interactive games and happily engage in them over and over again. Simple patterns in stories, songs, and actions help older infants and toddlers remember sequences and anticipate what comes next. For example, they may begin to sing along to the parts of a repetitive song like “Old MacDonald” or participate in simple action patterns with adult support, such as performing some of the actions to “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”

If children have opportunities to engage in a variety of activities—action, language, and construction—that involve patterns, they can begin to learn to recognize simple, repeating patterns and can begin to reproduce patterns that they hear or see. Young preschoolers actively engage in patterned movements to music, in patterned clapping games, and in repeated patterns of words in songs and stories. They also attend to visual patterns. With adult support, they may learn to recognize and talk about simple visual patterns, such as the yellow and black pattern in a picture of a bumblebee. They may also attempt to copy simple repeating patterns from a model or create a pattern of their own. For example, a child might make a paper chain with alternating colors by copying one the teacher has already constructed, though he may need adult support to finish it. Preschool children often find it difficult to keep the pattern rule in mind and tend to make errors in the pattern as they add elements.

Children can reliably reproduce, create, or extend simple, repeating patterns if they are able to identify the initial sequence of elements, recognize when it begins to repeat itself, and make predictions about what comes next. Older preschoolers become better able to understand the relationships among elements in a pattern. They can more reliably copy a simple pattern from a model or create their own simple patterns. Children are first successful copying a pattern from a model that is made with the same materials they are using. Once children have mastered the notion of what constitutes a pattern, they can create and copy a particular pattern (such as ABAB) with a variety of objects. For example, a child might use pink and green buttons to copy an alternating color pattern made with yellow and blue blocks. The ability of children to recognize, analyze, and create patterns eventually extends to creating more complex patterns, including patterns with multiple repeating elements, such as ABBCABBC. However, older preschoolers may still have difficulty sustaining the regularity of a pattern rule when they create and extend patterns.