Understanding, recognizing, and extending patterns is a key skill that shows up in academic and everyday life. Practicing patterning is a great way to provide a hands-on, mainly independent activity that will keep your child busy. There’s many ways to do this, and it can be as simple as setting up the beginning of a few patterns using markers, stickers, shapes, or blocks and encouraging your child to continue them. For younger kiddos, try co-creating a pattern and pointing out how one section repeats until they’re ready to try it on their own. Older learners could be challenged to make their own patterns from materials they find around the house. We love the idea of making pattern “snakes” from Busy Toddler as a way to practice recognizing and extending a pattern.
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