Pattern worksheets and activities for kids

Being able to recognize repeatable sequences helps children in many academic areas as well as in their daily life.

In life, children who can recognize a pattern can avoid being constantly surprised. Take the bedtime routine. If a child knows that he will be expected to brush his teeth, put on his pajamas, hear a bedtime story and then go to sleep, he will be able to fall into the routine without being surprised or upset. Children enjoy routine and familiarity, so recognizing an activity pattern will help them relax and feel in control of their environment.

Children will also be able to predict what behavior is expected when they recognize a pattern. For example, if a child knows that he is expected to hang up his jacket when he comes home, he will instinctively take off his jacket and look for a hook when he enters a friend's house.

In math, patterns serve as a basis for many mathematical functions. Counting is easier when a child recognizes the pattern 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and so on. Skip counting is especially built on patterns such as 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on or 10, 20, 30 etc. And as math progresses to more complicated areas, such as algebra and trigonometry, pattern recognition will prove helpful.

Children will also see patterns when learning to read and to spell. Word families that have a common word ending, such as -at, form a pattern with the words cat, pat, bat, mat, hat, fat, rat, sat, flat and splat. And patterns are also evident with popular beginnings to words, such as fl, which can be seen in the words flat, flan, flip, flop, flap, flag, flint, and so on.

When a child learns to spell, many rules follow patterns: i before e except after c, for example. Or a child will know the pattern for adding a silent e to a word to change the short vowel sound to a long vowel sound (cap becomes cape, for example).

- Introduce the most basic pattern first with two different colored beans or with a penny and dime, for example. This is called an AB pattern since two items alternate and the AB pattern repeats. Place a dime, a penny, a dime and a penny in a line in front of your child. Point to each coin as you say its name. Ask your child which coin would come next to continue the pattern.

- When your child recognizes the AB pattern, give him two groups of coins (pennies and nickels or pennies and dimes since the copper color and silver color are easy to distinguish). Ask him to create the AB pattern himself.

- Then introduce more complex patterns such as AAB or ABC and ask your child to say the name of the objects as he touches them moving down the line. Then ask him to create his own pattern.

- Other items that are easy to use when creating patterns are buttons (purchase cards of buttons inexpensively at fabric stores), small plastic beads (called pony beads which can be found in craft stores) or dry cereal pieces.

- Show your child a movement pattern using claps, taps (touching your shoulders) and slaps (touching your knees). Repeat two or three movements to create the pattern and see if your child can join you once he recognizes the pattern. (For example, "clap, clap, slap" could be a movement pattern.)

- Look for patterns in nature and the environment. A flag, for example, has an AB pattern in the stripes or a table set for dinner has a fork, plate, knife, fork, plate, knife (ABC) pattern.

- Colored self-stick dots found in office supply stores can be used to create patterns on paper. Encourage your child to make the pattern by creating a line going from left to right.

- Pairs of shoes from family members are ideal for creating an ABC or ABCD pattern that repeats one time.

Many children's books have one or two lines that are repeated throughout the book. A pattern exists when the repeated phrase is added at predictable intervals.

An example of this is the Kevin Henkes book Kitten's First Full Moon. In this book the phrase: "Poor kitten!" comes after each misfortune for this little kitten. Or in Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear the same question is asked on every other page: "What do you see?"

Sometimes there is a pattern in the pictures. For example, in the book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, the pages alternate between black and white and colored illustrations.

Check out these great Kindergarten worksheets:
Tracing worksheets
Following directions worksheets
Color words worksheets
Shapes worksheets
Compare and contrast worksheets
Days of the week worksheets

And enjoy these wonderful Reading skills worksheets:
Dolch sight words
Sight word games
Word family worksheets
Rhyming worksheets

And check out these kindergarten math worksheets:
100s Chart
Counting worksheets
Skip counting worksheets
Bar graph worksheets
Pictograph worksheets
Tracing numbers worksheets
Ordinal numbers worksheets