Pattern: Before Algebra, There Was Clap-Clap-Stomp

When you think of patterns and young children, what comes to mind?  Is it alternating colors, like red, blue, red, blue, or a series of shapes that repeats?  Now let’s think about what’s needed to extend a pattern—to predict what comes next. To be successful with this, a child has to engage in much more complex thinking that goes well beyond just naming the pieces present in the pattern.

They must:

• Notice structure
  
  
• Hold it in their mind
  
  
• Identify the repeating rule
  
  
• And apply it forward
  
  

That’s powerful mathematical thinking. And in the toddler years, it starts with noticing and naming—if your child already recognizes patterns, celebrate that!

In a recent moment I caught on video, my three-year-old Jonylah points out a pattern on the inside of a book cover: dark red, light red, dark red, light red... But when I ask what comes next, she pauses and says, “I don’t know.”

That pause? That’s where the learning lives.

👉 Watch the video here: Pattern in a Book

Routines Are Patterns Too

When your child follows a familiar routine — like getting dressed, brushing teeth, eating breakfast — they’re experiencing a temporal pattern. Something that happens in a certain order, over and over again.

Here’s a peek at the morning routine chart in our home. These daily rhythms are an incredible opportunity to talk about sequence, predictability, and eventually — even “what comes next.”

Whether it’s lining up blocks or moving to the next step in the bedtime routine, these small moments lay the groundwork for flexible, confident mathematical thinking.

In the parent mini-course Math Building Blocks for Toddlers course Patterns lesson, we go deeper into how children build the mental model of a pattern — and how those early models connect to more advanced ideas like multiplication, algebra, and place value later on. I help you see the math in moments just like this — and give you the tools to nurture it with joy and confidence.

You’re already building a math foundation. Let’s make it even stronger—together.

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