Making patterns with matchbox cars

by Sophie
(New York)

When my son was 3 years old, I noticed he liked to line up all his matchbox cars. He would spend a long time making really straight lines.

One day I played cars with him and I made a line with a repeating pattern: blue car, blue car, red car.

I asked him to make a line of matchbox cars with the same pattern I had made, and he did it.

He loved the game and asked me to make more patterns and harder patterns to copy.

Eventually he started noticing and making patterns of other things, like two broken pretzels and one whole pretzel, repeated a few times or green crayon, blue crayon, red crayon, repeated a few times.

I was impressed at how he transferred the idea of patterns from his cars to his food and other toys.