3 item pattern recognition

I was a bit worried why my son still couldn’t see patterns that had 3 items repeated, e.g. red, blue, green, red, blue, green, what’s next? I was worried that it might indicate he has problems with maths.

But I’m satisfied that he’s okay with other aspects of early maths skills e.g. recognising numbers at least up to 20 (and beyond that actually), knowing the concept of addition, knowing that +1 means the next number, that as numbers get bigger the quantity gets more etc.

So I wasn’t sure what to conclude. Several months ago, my husband voiced his worry about our son’s maths skill, thus I didn’t want to brush aside any concerns that I had.

Last week, I asked my friend who’s a kindergarten principal about this, and she thinks he’s fine in terms of his maths skills. She suggested presenting the pattern in a different way, using words instead since he’s stronger in literacy skills.

A day after consulting her, I tried a version of what she suggested. My son and I were messing about on the white board, when I tried this pattern on him:

2, 4, 6, 2, 4, 6, 2, ?, 6 “What’s the missing number?” I asked him. He surprised me when he immediately answered “4”. He usually hesitates in answering 3 pattern questions, or says “I dunno”. I thought that question might have been easy for him cos he might have memorised “2, 4, 6, 8” from the closing song of the “Team Umizoomi” show that he watches daily.

So I tried another 3 pattern:

1, 3, 5, 1, 3, 5, 1, ?, ? “What are the missing numbers?” I asked. He surprised me again with the right answer! He took the marker and wrote “3” by himself (but looked almost unrecognisable) and needed help with writing “5”.

I decided to give this experiment another try, but this time I drew shapes (star, circle, square). Having given the right answers again, I now know that he’s alright with recognising 3 item pattern repetition. I’m happy, happy, happy!

But I’m still very curious why a week before the above exercise, he couldn’t do a different version of 3 item pattern repetition.

There are several factors that are different between the versions of 3 item pattern that he could do and those that he couldn’t do before this, which I’m very curious about.
- Does it make a difference if it’s written on a whiteboard versus using tangible objects versus pictures of objects?
- Does it make a difference if it’s presented in a larger size (my writing was large) versus the much smaller size of my printed pattern?
- Does it make a difference when the object used in the pattern is something he’s very familiar with?

Only one way to find out! : )