Free printable pattern worksheets
Six sheets that walk the whole progression rather than repeating AB twelve times: odd-one-out, classifying, making your own sorting rule, measuring and comparing, then finding the part of a pattern that repeats and continuing it.
US Letter · 6 pages · black and white · no signup
What is on the sheets
Print at actual size (100%), not "fit to page". The target sizes on these pages are chosen for a particular age of hand, and scaling shrinks them.
Using them well
Say the pattern out loud
Red, blue, red, blue. Saying it makes the structure audible before the child can see it.
Ask for the rule, not the answer
"How did you know?" gets you more than "is that right?" That is the difference between copying a pattern and making one.
Build it before you draw it
Buttons, blocks, socks. The page is a record of thinking that happened with objects first.
Guides that go with these
AB, ABC, AABB: what preschool pattern work teaches
Most pattern worksheets stop at AB and stay there. The progression past it is where the mathematics is.
For grown-upsHow to sit beside a child doing a worksheet
The most challenging part of an activity book is not on the page. It is sitting there while a four-year-old gets it wrong.
How we make themWhy our activity books are printed in black and white
The research behind it, the one finding that argues against it, and what the child gets in return.
Where these came from
These are 6 pages out of 100.
Matching, sorting, seriation, and patterns from AB to growing. This is the thinking a child needs before arithmetic makes sense. Seven units, each opening at its own easiest version: same and different, sorting by one rule then two, ordering by size, AB through AABB and growing patterns, sequencing events, shape and position, then challenges that combine them.
