Same Pattern, New Costume

Your child takes one pattern and “dresses it up” in completely different materials — a red-blue block pattern becomes a spoon-fork pattern, then a clap-stomp pattern — discovering that the pattern is the rule, not the stuff.

  1. Build a model pattern with two colors of blocks or bricks and leave it where your child can see it: red, blue, red, blue, red, blue.
  2. Read it together. Then hand over a different pair of materials (spoons and forks, or socks and shoes) and say, “Can you make the same kind of pattern with these? It has to go the same way as mine.”
  3. Line the new pattern up directly under the model so the two can be matched item by item: every red has a spoon under it, every blue has a fork.
  4. Give the pattern a letter name. Touch the items and chant “A, B, A, B, A, B” over both rows. “They are both A-B patterns!”
  5. Dress it up again: perform the same pattern as actions (clap, stomp) or sounds (moo, quack).
  6. Try a new model with a different structure — red, red, blue, red, red, blue — and ask your child to give it a new costume too.

Variation: Pattern Twins — lay out three short patterns made from different materials (two AB, one AAB) and ask which two are “twins underneath.”

Requirements

  • Space: A table or a clear patch of floor
  • Surface: Table, tray, or floor
  • Materials: Two colors of blocks or bricks (about 6 of each), plus two or three other pairs of household objects (spoons and forks, socks and shoes, pasta shapes, coins and buttons)
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child
  • Supervision: Moderate — the adult builds the model and guides the matching

Rationale & Objective

Copying a pattern with the same materials can be done by matching colors one at a time. Rebuilding it with different materials cannot — the child has to grasp the underlying structure. Researchers call this abstracting a pattern, and Rittle-Johnson, Fyfe, Loehr and Miller (2015) found that many 4- and 5-year-olds can do it, even though adults rarely ask them to, and that their pattern knowledge grows over the preschool year. Fyfe, McNeil and Rittle-Johnson (2015) showed that abstract labels (“A, B, A, B”) help children solve these tasks better than labels tied to the objects (“red, blue”). NCTM’s Algebra standard for PreK–2 names this skill directly: translating a pattern “from one representation to another.” Seeing that red-blue, spoon-fork, and clap-stomp are all “the same” is a first experience of generalization — the idea that sits at the heart of algebra — and it connects to Common Core’s Mathematical Practice 7, looking for and making use of structure.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: looks for the same colors to copy the model, or makes a line with the new materials that does not follow the model’s order
  • Developing: makes a matching AB pattern in new materials when the items are lined up one-to-one under the model and the adult chants along
  • Proficient: translates AB and AAB or ABB patterns into new objects and into actions without one-to-one help, and uses letter names with support
  • Advanced: names a pattern’s structure unprompted (“that’s an A-B-B one”), picks out “twin” patterns made from different materials, and translates ABC patterns

Safety Notes

  • Keep small items (buttons, coins, dried pasta) away from children under 3, and remind your child that they are not for mouths
  • This is a genuinely hard idea — if your child becomes frustrated, go back to lining items up one under another and do it together
  • Avoid correcting by rebuilding it yourself; point to one spot and ask, “What is above this one?”
  • Keep sessions short (10 minutes); abstraction is tiring and is best revisited often rather than drilled

Hints

  • Playfulness: call it a costume party — “The pattern is the same person underneath, just wearing a spoon-and-fork outfit today”
  • Sustain interest: let the child choose the next costume from anywhere in the house — fruit, toy animals, bath toys, stickers
  • Common mistake: only ever naming patterns by their colors. Add a second, neutral name (“A, B” or “one kind, other kind”) so the child has words for the structure itself
  • Limited space: draw the model as colored dots on paper and translate it into two kinds of stickers or stamps underneath
  • Cross-domain: translating into sounds links to music; using letter names gives light alphabet practice; explaining why two patterns are “twins” builds reasoning language
  • Progression: AB with one-to-one matching → AB from memory of the model → AAB/ABB → ABC → objects to actions to sounds → sorting patterns into “twins”

Sources

  • Rittle-Johnson, Fyfe, Loehr & Miller (2015), “Beyond Numeracy in Preschool: Adding Patterns to the Equation,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 31, 101–112
  • Fyfe, McNeil & Rittle-Johnson (2015), “Easy as ABCABC: Abstract Language Facilitates Performance on a Concrete Patterning Task,” Child Development
  • Rittle-Johnson, Fyfe, McLean & McEldoon (2013), “Emerging Understanding of Patterning in 4-Year-Olds,” Journal of Cognition and Development
  • NCTM (2000), Principles and Standards for School Mathematics — Algebra Standard, PreK–2: translate patterns from one representation to another
  • US Common Core — Standards for Mathematical Practice, MP7: look for and make use of structure
  • Head Start ELOF — Goal P-MATH 7: patterns in different forms