Kindergarten children love to remain active so it only makes sense to get the children up and away from their desks. They can use their bodies to practice following patterns. Begin by having the children copy your movements. Explain that when the same thing is repeated twice, a pattern is formed. Stand in front of the students and clap your hands three times fast and three times slow. Wait for the students to repeat this. Then jump up and down twice and then hop on one foot. Have the students repeat after you. You can make a long pattern of all the moves you worked on so far by clapping your hands three times fast, three times slow, jumping up and down twice and hoping on one foot. Next, let the children create a few patterns that you must repeat. This can include snapping your fingers, blinking your eyes or turning around.
Create patterns with shapes. Begin by cutting out two different colored squares. Create a pattern for the students to copy on paper with their crayons. You can make two red squares, a green square, two red squares and a green square. Once the children have copied this pattern, ask they what colored square would come next. They should shout out a red square. Repeat by mixing up the squares to form a new pattern. Introduce a new color or a new shape. It is important that the children recognize the pattern and are able to tell you which color or shape should come next.
Grab several quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies to create a few patterns out of money. Give the kindergarten children play coins. Lay out a pattern of one dime, two nickels, three pennies, one dime, two nickels and three pennies. Instruct the children to repeat this pattern with their play money. Award a small piece of chocolate, or one of the real coins, to the child who completes the pattern first. Repeat with new patterns. For example, you may want to try one quarter, two dimes, one nickel, one quarter, two dimes and one nickel.
Tell the children that patterns can also exist in letters and words. Place the letters AA, AB and BB on separate notecards. Repeat until you have one notecard of each letter pattern for each student. Hand out the notecards and call two students up to the front of the class at a time. Instruct them to use their notecards to form a pattern. The students may come up with AA, AA, BB, BB, AB and AB, or they may choose to just use four of the cards and create AB, AA, AB and AA. Keep calling up pairs of students to have them make new patterns out of the letter cards for the class. Teachers can then switch to having the students make patterns out of words. You could start with something simple like goat, cow, goat and cow. Place a few word patterns on the board and see how quickly the children can shout out which word comes next.